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| Tatiana Nabieva and Russian team choreographer Olga Burova. Here they are with a friend, practising for a caption competition for the RGF website. Advance entries at welcome at this website. |
Interesting to see Anastasia Sidorova take the highest floor score in the women's all around (14.75) and second on vault (14.6). None of the Russian seniors barring Komova competed in apparatus finals, and all of them steered clear of vault final. Vault appears to be a relative weakness for the Russian women, and I guess this apparatus may lose them the Olympic team title when considering the overwhelming reliability and power of the US women.
Sidorova was the standout of the new generation (NB, in the absence of her close rival Anastasia Grishina who was home with flu). With the exception of Aliya Mustafina, no one from the gold medal winning team at the 2010 world championships finished in the top group of gymnasts (Tanya Nabieva, who contributed solidly at last autumn's World Championships, was resting her sore back). The Mustafina, Komova and Sidorova generations are deep and talented, and a rapid turnover of senior team members is developing. Mustafina appears to be the dominant force here and she has taken a huge step at this competition with her psychological return to competition. The All Around has an interesting interview on this subject here with coach Alexander Alexandrov.
We shall have to see if the team stabilises post 2012 or if a similar pace of change continues.
2004 and 2008 Olympian Anna Pavlova continues to score highly on beam (top score of 14.85 in the AA; 3rd in the apparatus final) and vault (3rd with 14.35; matched placing in the apparatus final) but I suspect her stamina not to be the same of those currently making the national team, and additionally her psychological vulnerability makes her too uncertain a team mate for the unforgiving 3-3 competition format.
Pictures of the competition are available here.
Picture of Nabieva and Burova by kind permission of the Russian Gymnastics Federation.
To be fair, the only members of the 2010 team that competed were Myzdrikova and Mustafina. This is why none of them were in the top groups. Dementyeva was at a Gala. Semenova is pretty much done. As you mentioned Nabieva has a sore back. Afanasyeva opted out of competing because she just came back from Mexico and wanted to take a rest. Afanasyeva could have medal in AA and could of had the top score on FX since her AA score in Mexico was 58.05 and her floor was an impressive 14.900.
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