Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

The Russian women won the gold medal today in the team competition at the Universiade in Gwangju, ahead of the Japanese and Korean teams.   The picture is Alla Sotnikova's gold medal ... from her Instagram account - thank you, Alla!  Congratulations! It was a fantastic team effort, highlighted by Polina Fyodorova's stable performances on bars, beam and floor, Maria Paseka's powerful vaulting (strong Amanar) and bars work, and Kramarenko's bars.  I loved the way that Fyodorova's technique on bars looked so effortless (wonderful 1.5 turn on the top of the high bar), the expressiveness of Sidorenko's floor work, and the power and emphatic charm of Elizarova.  This is not to ignore the great efforts of Kramarenko and Paseka, but we see these two often on the international scene and their gymnastics is familiar, and on a different level.   Alla Sidorenko, for example, has not featured on a national team before, and the native of St Petersburg showed her class her...

I am still waiting for the publication of full results (for some reason the RGF files are missing names, at least when viewed on my IPad) but some of us were awake very early this morning to see Aliya Mustafina confound predictions of her future specialist status, overcome her recent recovery, and win the all around at Russia Cup.  Highlights were her uneven bars routine and a beam where she presented her best combinations with vigour, recording a good mark despite a fall, but she also leads the vault, floor and bars scoring amongst the all arounders eligible for inclusion on the team for Nanning.  (Elizarova scored higher on floor, but is unlikely to be selected as she does not train with the team at Lake Krugloye and has only one strong piece.) Second placed Kharenkova was absolutely outstanding on beam. 1 Aliya Mustafina 14.833/15.4/14.6/14.3 = 59.133 2. Maria Kharenkova  14.1/13.867/16.2/13.667 = 57.834 3  Daria Spiridonova 13.833/15.033/14.233/13.7 = 56.799 4. A...