Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

The Pacific Rim competition is now well under way, and proving to be interesting.  Russia sent junior and senior teams in both the men's and women's competitions, with the juniors providing a real point of interest in terms of selection for the forthcoming Junior European Championships.  Startlists for today's men's competition can be found here and here .  Quick hit descriptions of routines for the men's and women's competitions can also be found here .  Gymnastics Examiner also has a list of which of the women have qualified for event finals tomorrow. Full results of the women's junior competition show Rostov-on-Don's Maria Kharenkova providing the highlight of the Russian performance across both seniors and juniors, to finish fourth (52.95) with a high note of 14 on her specialist piece, beam.  Ekaterina Baturina finished 5th, only .6 behind Kharenkova. Anastasia Belova ended in 10th place.  In the senior competition newcomer Anastasia Marchuk l...

Viktoria Komova, Maria Paseka, Tatiana Solovyova and Maria Stepanova participated in this weekend's World Cup event in Ghent, a well attended competition with the exception of the USA and Romania.   The Russian men were represented by Andrei Cherkasov, Anton Golutsotskov and Dimitri Stolyarov. China really showed great promise here, winning four of the gold medals. Viktoria Komova performed excellently to win bars but suffered a fall on beam, ending in 5th place.  This was a useful warm up for Tokyo and, surprisingly, Viktoria's first international senior competition.  Elsewhere, Maria Paseka did not look quite repaired from her injury, struggling with her landings on floor and looking rather flat on vault.  Albert at the All Around Gymnastics news was present and did some fantastic quick hits (how does he manage to watch the routines, write down the skills and keep track of scores all at once?  Does he have an executive assistant?).  Elsewhere,...

As you may have read earlier, Russian team contenders Viktoria Komova and Maria Paseka are scheduled to compete at this World Cup competition over the weekend.   Their compatriots Maria Stepanova and Diana Sapranova are also on the roster. For Maria Paseka especially, this could be an important test for selection for the World Championships. I will be updating results early next week, but in the meantime Double Front has some information on the competition and there is a website here.

Gymnastics No Ceiling has confirmed the full competitor list for this September's Ghent Challenger Cup (3-4 September).  Competing for Russia will be Viktoria Komova, Maria Paseka, Diana Sapronova and Maria Stepanova. Given Alexandrov's recent announcement that this event could be used as a minor selection, I find this rather interesting.  In my opinion, Komova's place on the team is probably fairly safe.  Paseka, Sapronova, Stepanova may be competing for a place on the team.  Paseka's strength is most definitely vault. That leg strapping looks quite heavy to me, but she looks fit and strong otherwise.  Stepanova took a bronze medal on floor at this spring's Russian national championships. At present, Komova and Sapronova are slated to compete bars and beam only, with Paseka and Stepanova appearing on floor and vault.  It's still early days, though ...