Skip to main content

Ksenia Afanasyeva - set to the music of Schubert and Liszt

Image
By
World Floor Champion Ksenia Afanasyeva grew up in 2011. She has always had something special, but in Tokyo she found her competitive self.

Afanasyeva was a great technician during her first major competition, the Youth Olympic Festival (2005) and a gymnast who clearly wanted to communicate with her audience. She has had her competitive ups and downs since then, but has always maintained a great line, amplitude and quality and has gradually improved her consistency. There is an emotional depth to her work. Feel it, especially in the video of her beam routine from the 2011 AA final, set to the music of Liszt and Schubert.

By 2011, Afanasyeva had become a consummate artistic gymnast, judged better than the rest of the world on the Blue Riband event of gymnastics, the floor exercise. Facially, she now exudes a quiet confidence and enjoyment. She most elegantly fulfills the requirements of the Code. She is a leader who always works for the team.

Many gymnasts peak in the early years of their career, but fade as the pressures of expectation and growth take their toll. The beautiful, ever maturing, Afanasyeva only gets better. There has always been something magnificent about her in full flow. I hope she can go from strength to strength in 2012 and beyond.

2005 - European Youth Olympic Festival - FX (age 13)



2005 - European Youth Olympic Festival - beam



2007, Bercy - FX (age 15)



2008, Beijing Olympics, Team qualifications, FX (age 16)



2009, Milan European Championships, AA, FX



2010, Rotterdam World Championships, Team Final, FX



2011, Tokyo World Championships, AA, Beam. Afanasyeva, set to Liszt and Schubert



2011, Tokyo World Championships, EF, FX

Labels:

Comments

  1. Lilia2 February 2012 at 08:27

    Thank you for the post on Ksenia. She always has had it all, but the belief that she's worth the Gold.. Once again, great coach is Alexandrov, he broght back the winning tradition and attitude,among the other vital constituents of training and preparation.
    I was jumping with joy when she won. So beautiful and powerful she is, so elegant and finally so golden!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering last summer - Nelli Kim, her judges and Viktoria Komova

By
In view of Nelli Kim's recent interview , Lupita and I thought it timely to revisit the performance of some of the WTC President's judges over past competitions ... this article from 27th August 2012 is reposted here, as a reminder. You will find a link to the FIG's newly published book of results at the Olympic Games here .  This year, they have broken down the judge's execution scores so you can see exactly how each judge evaluated the gymnasts' performances.  It makes for interesting reading - if only I had more time to analyse each judge's marking.  A skim reading already highlights multiple inconsistencies in individual judges' marks and makes you wonder why they bother with the jury at all. I have taken the time to look at the reference judges' scores for the top four in the women's all around.  The FIG explains here what their role is, and how they are selected.  I even used my calculator, which is a risky thing in my hands.  M...
42 comments
Read more

Pongo’s predictions for Russia MAG in Rotterdam

By
Pongo is my AI assistant.  Read here his calculations of who might make the best Russian MAG team at the World Championships in October.  Please do feel free to disagree audibly, in the comments and note that Pongo admits, even he makes mistakes.  I don’t generally write such statistical material, so this may be a one off. With apologies for any errors, mine entirely and I wrote the brief.   Yes. I’ve treated this as a genuine team-construction problem , rather than simply taking the six gymnasts with the highest AA scores. For the calculation I used the most recent strong competitive score available for each gymnast: the Spartakiad scores for Yakubov, Novikov and Kisel , and mainly European Championship team-final/final scores for Dukhno, Marinov, Zaika and Sieedin , supplemented by Russian Championship scores where a recent European score was not available. That matters because Dukhno and Marinov, for example, were substantially stronger in Zagreb than some earlier...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nelli Kim - 'Russian gymnastics has closed in on itself' - Lupita translates

By
Lupita has translated this ITAR-TASS interview with Nelli Kim.  It's controversial, to say the least. Ed's note : much of the initial response to this interview - both here and in the wider gymternet -  has focussed on the detail of Kim's words and especially her comments about Viktoria Komova, and smiling.  But I think these have to be taken in context, and not too literally. Don't forget that just a day ago Andrei Rodionenko complained bitterly about the judging in Antwerp, calling Kim's behaviour 'aggressive'. Kim is responding to this here, and to the wider current context of Russian gymnastics.  What she is essentially saying to the Russian coach is 'get your own house in order, produce confident, disciplined, well trained gymnasts - stop complaining, do your job, and I will do mine.'   She goes about saying this in a somewhat long winded way and says some things along the way that seem contradictory, unfair, inappropriate even for th...
30 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more