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Mustafina 'unlikely' to compete at Russian nationals

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Valentina Rodionenko has told TASS news agency that it is unlikely that Aliya will compete at Russian nationals in April.  The Championships had been planned as the Olympic Champion's return to competition following knee surgery, but she is not yet fully ready, and it seems that more recovery time is necessary.  Her last competition was the European Games in Baku, last June.

If this turns out to be true, it isn't the end of the world.  Aliya herself would most probably say that she herself just doesn't know as yet whether she will compete.  

Besides, there are plenty more competitions for Aliya in the coming months!  

By the way, congratulations are due to the Russian team, who won today's DTB Team Challenge with some very convincing performances, and to Nikolai Kuksenkov who won a bronze medal in the DTB Cup!
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  1. Anonymous22 March 2016 at 03:59

    I hope she can compete 2x before the olympics this season. Even though she has loads of experience, even she needs more than just 1-2 competitions in the last 2 years leading up to the olympics to try out new skills and no combos etc.

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    1. Anonymous23 March 2016 at 18:11

      I agree with you. She needs more competitions to keep herself motivated and get familiar with the feelings. In my opinion, she should have competed in the 2015 Worlds at least.

      Her European Game floor was a warning sign for me. She never found an ideal approach to perform the turn combination (and I believe it was the balance loss took away her Floor Gold). And even she won the AA Gold, the score wouldn't even allow her to medal in Glasgow.

      I really have a feeling that Aliya is shunning away from competitions nowadays. When Khorkina was at her age, Khorkina was still competing annually, and went on to win the 2003 All-around, and Khorkina was already over 23 then.

      Personally I would want to see Aliya win at least one team and one individual medal in Rio. But somehow, I fear that she might just have a dim hope for the team medal (a bit like Boginskaya in Barcelona, but hey, Boginskaya went on to take 1996 European AA silver medal at the age of 23!).

      Delete
    2. Anonymous24 March 2016 at 04:57

      yea true but with Mustafina back, Russia has a good chance at medaling. Despite 4 falls, they barely finished out of the medals. For the olympics, not only will they (hopefully) not have that melt down but they will have Mustafina.

      Individual medal will be harder however with every event being fully stacked including AA. The place she can medal will probably be beam but with such horrid beam finals this entire cycle, every single athlete at EF finals has a legit chance at medaling as long as they stay on ad mustafina is inconsistent here.

      Only time will tell. We'll see her form once she competes (soon hopefully)

      Delete
  2. Anonymous30 March 2016 at 13:03

    Well well well today Valentina Rod told to RSport that Aliya will compete at Russian championships on beam and bars http://rsport.ru/artist_gym/20160330/908949636.html P.S. to be continued...

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