Skip to main content

EYOF - women's team results

NOTE : FOR AN UPDATE OF THE FULL, FINAL RESULTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

So far, the full results are not available, but Italy came first with a score of 110.95, narrowly ahead of the Romanians who had 110.55.  Germany took the bronze, with Russia in 4th place. 

I didn't see the final subdivision, but did manage to catch the online coverage of subdivision 3.  The Romanian team (Iordache, Badea, Gheorghe) was excellent overall and in particular on beam, where they recorded the top three scores of the competition. 

The Russians were a very young team hand-picked from the 1996/1997 generation.  Anna Rodionova, Evgeniya Shelgunova and Kristina Sidorova - all of whom have featured in recent domestic competitions in Russia - suffered a few disasters, not least a very nasty, head first fall on beam from Shelgunova, who admittedly has mentioned it as her bogey piece.  The team had started on beam, so this must have been a nervey experience for her.  Kristina Sidorova followed up with a rather erratic floor exercise, but Rodionova and Sheglunova saved the day with some good results on floor and vault.

The following information is all based on results after the third subdivision, and will undoubtedly have changed in light of the Italian team performance.  As soon as I have the full results I will comment but in the meantime this may be of interest:

Anna Rodionova in particular looked confident and mature in this competition, taking 2nd place in the all around qualifiers behind a much improved Larissa Iordache whose 15.5 on beam was the highest score of the competition. Shelgunova was the next best placed Russian at 5th, with Ukraine's Daryna Liubytska in 3rd and Scheder (GER) in 4th.  Right behind Shelgunova in the all around is Gheorghe.  The all around competition is clearly Iordache's to lose, but only .9 separates the gymnasts in places 3 to 8 so there will be a close match for the 'minor' placings.

In the individual apparatus finals, Iordache qualifies in the top two on all four apparatus, leading vault, beam and floor.  Germany's Sophie Scheder leads bars.  All being well, depending on the Italian placings, and assuming 8 progress, the following Russian girls will qualify to apparatus finals :

Vault - Shelgunova and Sidorova
Bars - Rodionova and Shelgunova
Beam - Rodionova
Floor - Rodionova and Shelgunova

The record doesn't show a mark for Sidorova's beam, which must be an error for she did perform, and to my eye did pretty well - I guess there may be an update.  It won't make any difference to the outcome of the team competition, though it may impact on the start lists for the apparatus finals.

Without the two Anastasias, Sidorova and Grishina, (both 1995 born, who are now competing as seniors in their homeland) the girls didn't dominate in the way they might have, but they still turned in some useful performances and have qualified themselves to a fair number of finals berths possible (with a query over the beam results).  All gymnasts make errors, let's just see how the girls react over the coming days and hope they can each take home an individual medal.  They will certainly have learned a great deal from their experiences here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alexander Alexandrov in his own words 1 - A Difficult Decision

Alexander Alexandrov with his daughter, Isa, at the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Rio.  (c) Alexander Alexandrov Russian coach Alexander Alexandrov has been prominent in the sport since 1983, when he came to the public eye as coach of the brilliant Dmitri Bilozerchev.  He has over thirty years’ experience of coaching World and Olympic Champions both in the country of his birth and in his adopted home, Houston, USA.  In his most recent position as Head Coach of the national women's artistic gymnastics (WAG) team for Russia, he quite simply resurrected his country’s gymnastics programme, re-establishing his team at the very top of the sport.  Prior to Alexandrov’s appointment, at the 2008 Olympics, Russian WAG had walked away empty handed, without medals.  At last year’s London Olympics, artistic gymnastics was one of Russia’s most successful sports.  Alexandrov’s Russia won the most gymnastics medals of any country competing, and his athlete Al...

Does Russia need Mustafina in Glasgow? Vaitsekhovskaya adds her voice

'Should Mustafina compete in Glasgow, considering her fragile state of health? - aren't the Olympics more important?' are the key themes of this brief news piece by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, a top sports journalist who has interviewed Alexandrov, Arkayev, Starkin, Mustafina and Rodionenko in the last five years since Aliya won the World Championships. Elena stresses that this year nothing unusual has happened.  Aliya has worked hard with her new coach Sergei Starkin.  She did a 'great job', demonstrating her work at the European Games in Baku where she won the all around, bars and team events as well as silver in the floor exercise. But, says Vaitsekhovskaya, more important than the medals was the fact that Aliya showed a new technical level, began work on upgrades for the Rio Olympics.  Just competing in one event - the Baku games - could be enough for a veteran athlete of Mustafina's experience.  The body ages in both time - and injuries.  Athletes always respond...

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

It was a Sunday morning.  I was drinking my coffee and contemplating the day ahead - a workout at the gym, shopping for groceries, an evening reading a book, or catching up on last night's episodes of crime thriller The Bridge .  How nice it was not to have to think about work for a day. Then I saw it - a story about the history of doping in The Observer .  Interesting reading. Of course, cheating is as old as the hills.  It is, unfortunately, human nature for some people to try to gain easy advantage in any kind of competition.  That is why we have laws, rules, ethical guidelines.  People who cheat should face justice and shouldn't complain when they are found out. But the story about pregnancy doping bothered me.  Hadn't that been found to be fictional?  The author began with Olga Kovalenko's allegations made in 1994 - but the rumours had started way back in 1991 with the documentary series More Than A Game .  The practice...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more