Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Many thanks to Liz McOsker who has contributed these fantastic photo collages comparing various skills - back flip (Komova/Wieber), Tkachev (Afanasyeva/Raisman) and split leaps (various) as performed by the American and Russian gymnasts. Words fail me.

Lifje has been hard at work, producing these picture collages comparing Olympians Alexandra Raisman and Gabrielle Douglas with their Russian counterparts, Aliya Mustafina and Viktoria Komova. I'll let both pictures speak mostly for themselves, but the differences are absolutely glaringly obvious in the first shots of Raisman and Mustafina.  .  The Douglas-Komova comparison is more, as Lifje says, a question of the details such as toepoint, extension and hands.  I would add to that, back and shoulders.