Skip to main content

Daria Skrypnik leads Europe's Youth in Tbilisi

Image
By

Daria Skrypnik became the standout individual gymnast today at the European Youth Olympics, taking a medal in every event - gold in team, all around and bars, bronze on beam and silver on vault and floor.  In fact the Russian girls did very well, with every single gymnast earning a medal besides her team gold - Eremina a bronze on vault, and Ilyankova bronze in the all around and bars.  An emerging team in this competition were Belgium and in particular rising star Axelle Klinckaert, who won both golds on this final day, on beam and floor, as well as the silver in the all around (very close - tie break with Skrypnik).

In the men's event, I think it is fair to say that Britain had the upper hand, taking the team gold.  Their leader was Joe Fraser who won the AA and parallel bars gold.  Hamish Carter took silver on floor behind team mate Gianni Regini-Moran.  It was quite a surprise, given his team's record on the piece, when Russia's elegant Alexander Sychugov won pommel horse with an immaculate routine, and then Maxim Sinichkin of Kazan made a strong display on rings to take gold there, too.  But today the boys didn't do quite as well, with Sinichkin finishing fifth on parallel bars while Britain's Joe won another convincing gold.  Arnaut ended up fourth on high bar.  The team didn't qualify a competitor to vault final, or to floor, after an error filled first day.  

Russian national coach for the MAG juniors, Vladimir Kirillov, pointed out that their top competitor, Andrei Makolov, was absent through injury and could have changed the outcome of the competition as he had better D values.  His AA total of 86 at the recent Russian junior championships WOULD have well out scored Joe Fraser - but then competition is competition, and ifs and buts abound everywhere.

A characteristic of the judging at this competition was a proliferation of ties - there were, for example, three amongst the eighteen gymnasts in the girls' AA final, and more across event finals.  Not all of the D and E scores have been published, which makes it difficult to conclude why this should have been so, but it does seem likely that there was a fair amount of 'boxing' of the E scores, with insufficient differentiation.  Tie break procedures favour execution over difficulty, but this is a disappointing outcome for gymnasts, fans and coaches, and surely the judges should be able to score decisively.

Live streaming for this competition has been sporadic.  Isn't it time that the UEG and/or FIG developed its own livestream, like BGTV or USA gymnastics?  

Link to complete results - http://tbilisi2015.com/en/gymnastics-results

Today's results are below for quick reference.  CONGRATULATIONS to all the participants, final lists, medallists and gold medallists!  A great show!!










Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alexander Alexandrov in his own words 1 - A Difficult Decision

By
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...
11 comments
Read more

Does Russia need Mustafina in Glasgow? Vaitsekhovskaya adds her voice

By
'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...
26 comments
Read more

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

By
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...
3 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more