The Russian MAG and WAG teams take their preparation for World Championships in Nanning one step further this week, as key players compete in the annual Russia Cup in Penza. There will be team, all around and event finals. The WAG team Last year the gymnasts were rather depleted and suffering the effects of injury; this year the national squad is still short of some of its top members, but has greater diversity and experience up and coming into the ranks, so it will be an interesting time. Last year saw St Petersburg gymnast and fan favourite Tatiana Nabiyeva lead the all around, ahead of Alla Sosnitskaya, Anna Pavlova, Anna Rodionova, Ekaterina Kramarenko and Polina Fyodorova. With the individual-only World Championships up coming in Antwerp, I remember writing that Russia might well decide to send a team of only three gymnasts, such was the paucity of available talent. The final reckoning saw Russia fare a little better than this, although performance lacked depth and re
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This made my whole year. Where the HELL did she pull that routine out from!?
ReplyDeleteSo happy for Aliya to get two individual medals at these championships! She has such a gorgeous and genuine smile! Excited to watch her gymnastics for many more years to come!
ReplyDeletedoes any of you know if she got the Triple turn with leg held in 180 split position named after her?
ReplyDeleteNo, an Uzbek gymnast submitted the skill and successfully competed it in qualifications.
DeleteI thought Aliya also completed it successfully in quals...? Or was that just a Memmel?
DeleteShe did. Because they both completed it successfully, it doesn't get named after either of them
DeleteSooo overscored!!!
ReplyDeleteI am a fan of Russian gymnastics and have always been, but it's painful to watch Mustafina's choreography, her leaps after the third acrobatic run, her lack of series and her elbows on BB. She seems pretty heavy on UB.
Russia has no depth... We all agree on that, but cannot they polish the routines as they used to?
It's not about Alexandrov or other coaches.
It's just like they are unable to upgrade, unable to clean things.
See? That's the mind set that's killing the sport, the "lack of series" thinking, what about the lack of spins, or the lack of leaps? At the end, each gymnast decides how to increase their difficulty, unfortunately most of them just do flips, they don't attempt nothing new.
DeleteI think it is a wise and smart decision, I f you come from an injury, have bad form while twisting and don't want to lose a of marks then why would you stick to tumbling, when you can make it up with beautiful leaps that worth even more than some acrobatics?
I believe that the "lack of series" applies to beam where Mustafina finished third ahead of Teramoto who in my opinion deserved that medal instead of Mustafina.
DeleteAww I was still asleep while this was on but her sheer delight made my kinda shitty day
ReplyDeleteAll I want to say is that judging in this championship reached a highest level of insufficiency ...
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to see the final result book to compare between the E-panel and ER scores.
John
agreed. mustafina is the queen of controversial bronze medals, nothing more it seems can define her career. It is a sad state of our sport when even gymnasts are pronouncing her status bonus publicly to media, and these arent gymnasts in the final with her or of a Big 4 country; just regular unbiased folks telling it like it is. Cheers to those three who are only sticking up for fair judging. I'm sure of Mustafina had been 4th to Sinner or robbed the way Asuka was, Elizabeth would be singing a different tune?
DeleteJust to clarify my words, I believe this “insufficiency” was in favor of the Russian gymnasts in a few times but in favor of the Americans all the way, (for instance: I do believe that Asuka deserves a much more E-score and subsequently the bronze medal, as I believe that Bai deserves a much more E-score and subsequently the gold, not Mustafina or Biles fault though…)
DeleteBut on the other hand it was against them in many times in this championship (as what happened on UB where the judges kept mustafina and spridinova and even kramarenko’s E-scores in high 8s when they deserved 9+ in many times, while the judges had no problem to give mediocre routines from Biles and Ross a 8.8233 and 8.800 respectively in the AA final)
Finally I don’t care about the scores that Nelli Kim’s subordinate judges stamp whether it’s in favor or against my allegiance to the Russian gymnasts as I shouldn’t be selective about those scores, so I chose to refuse it totally even if it intersected with my opinion. But I can compare these scores with themselves to prove the discrepancies and corruption in it.
John
Asuka and the rest of the world where all robbed by Biles. Thats what happened. Have never seen someone being so overscored like that. Thank god they had the decency to handle Hong the VT gold. Skinner got what she deserved (if not more) from her lousy form and horrendous splits and execution. Ferrari got 14.66 with much cleaner execution than Skinner and nobody thinks she was robbed? Lol.
DeleteI think Ferrari knows she's always going to be robbed on execution. She usually ups her difficulty score in a FX final so she has a chance of a medal against gymnasts who are stamped as deserving of a high execution score. Didn't work out this time for her but most probably she'll be back.
DeleteOh Musty! Good to see her happy and increasing her level. What ambition, fierce and determination, it was great to watch.
ReplyDeleteAliya with 11 world medals now. :)
ReplyDeleteIf my list is accurate, she passed:
Nastia Liukin (9), Shannon Miller (9), Alicia Sacramone (10) from USA; Maxi Gnauck (9) from the former East Germany; Eva Bosáková (10), Věra Čáslavská (10) from the former Czechoslovakia; Ecaterina Szabo (10), Simona Amânar (10), Daniela Silivaș (10) from Romania; Svetlana Boginskaya (9) from the former Soviet Union.
She is now tied at 11 (though with fewer gold medals) with the following all (mostly) from the former Soviet Union:
Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nellie Kim, Yelena Shushunova, and Oksana Chusovitina (who has won some of her medals for other countries)
So happy to see her pick up some more individual medals after having such a tough week. :)
ReplyDelete