Russian Team for Gymnix

It has been 8 years (two whole quads) since Nailya Mustafina went to Canada and had one of the best competitions of her short lived career there. It was way back when the two Mustafina sisters were just tiny Russian baby swans taking over the world together.

8 years later and it's time for new Russian babies to take that important step on their way to becoming A) a star (someone like Khorkina, Aliya, Afan) B) Russian regulation hot mess (everyone else on the senior team) or C) one of those amazing Russian juniors who never make it to seniors (Nailya). Let's hope this year's Gymnix team belongs to the category A. Or at least B. Although, there's a 99% chance that they'll end up in C...

But I love Gymnix. It's one of those really rare competitions where we can see (always plenty of videos) gymnasts from youth to junior national team level competing together and the Russians actually attend every year. This year's Gymnix will be held 3-6 March with Anastasia Ilyankova (b. 2001), Ulyana Perebinosova (b. 2001), Valeria Saifulina (b. 2002) and Varvara Zubova (b. 2002) attending. These are not their top juniors (except for Ilyankova, this is actually her 3rd Gymnix), but this is another reason why I love Gymnix, we get to see gymnasts we don't usually see so much of.

I'm going to post more when we get to see some videos, but here's quickly a few things that I'm looking forward to:

• Ilyankova's amazing bars. She's seriously amazing on this apparatus and her routine isn't the usual cookie cutter Russian style.
• Ilyankova's everything else. She's a headcase, but what else is new. I'm hoping she gets her shit at least somewhat together for this competition, she's going to be senior next year so I'd love to see some improvements.
• Perebinosova's floor. She's actually quite clean there, and charming too. So she has potential, I'm hoping she can harness that.
• Perebinosova's bars. Like Ilyankova, she has an interesting routine (Ezhova!), but unlike Ilyankova, it's really, really rough. I'm hoping she has cleaned it up. 
• Definitely not Perebinosova's beam. I don't want to die from anxiety attack.
• Saifulina's floor and beam. She really has lovely lines and presentation, especially on beam.
• Zubova's everything. I've been stanning her since forever, she has way too much charisma for such a tiny thing. I even love her name so much, she really needs to become a star. And she does gainers. And stays on the beam, with nice routine too. Go win everything girl. We can always hope for a miracle on bars, right?

Here's the list of competitors:

Olivia Cimpian, yay! Just please don't embarrass my baby Russians by being more elegant than them. And yeah, Team USA is going to crush everyone. They rarely even come to Gymnix, what's up with that...