The Russians compete for worst vault of the day in Stuttgart!

And the winner is...... Shelgunova! With a score of 12.550. Not only did she fall, but she also underrotated a DTY badly enough to get her vault devalued. What a performance. Watch the action here:

Dmitrieva came in second with a DTY worth 13.250 and Melnikova third with a DTY worth 14.250. A DTY that scores over 14, wow. Kapitonova competed the worst worst vault. A solid FTY. The score (13.900) was bit lower than Melka's, but I'm giving Melka the bronze medal for terrible execution. Congrats to everyone!

Oh, and a special mention goes to my favorite, Seda Tutkhalyan, who competed at a different competition but still stuck to the party line with 13.400 for an underrotated DTY with hands down. Amazing camaraderie, just like in Glasgow.
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Now that the awards for the worst vaulting have been given, I'm going to move on to the actual competition, DTB Pokal Team Challenge. I'm actually really happy that we got an entire team of Russians for this competition. They kept the most important (and injury prone) players at home, and failed to acquire a visa for Maria Kharenkova (who was supposed to compete in Glasgow World Cup earlier), but sent a team of youngsters, all of whom are fighting for one final spot on the Olympic team, to Germany to show their skills.

Friday's competition was qualification for team final and even though the vault debacle that I already described, they qualified first. They also won the team final on Sunday.

Daria Spiridonova's bars were a highlight of the competition (inconsistent scoring but 15.650 was her best), but she stays one-event-wonder with unimpressive performances on beam. It really frustrates me. Taking her to Rio with one event sounds stupid, but not only is her score a huge one for the team, she can also put up a good fight for individual gold medal. I think her spot on the team will depend on 3 things: Vika's and Aliya's scoring potential, Melka's and Kapitonova's readiness on AA. Seda is a wild card that could factor if she proves her consistency in AA and especially on beam. But that is a huge question mark and probably unlikely (it pains for me to even say that).

Angelina Melnikova finished second AA after Giulia Steingruber. She definitely didn't have her best competition with the bad vault and falls on floor (first day) and beam (second day), but her bars were solid. She had her old floor routine, but with several upgrades. Her D score was 6.3, with a new high double layout and a turn after turn à la Mustafina. I think it's going to be difficult keeping the D-score so high consistently with so much depending on the turn connections, but maybe she'll make it. She has also cleaned up her tumbling a bit, which was nice to see. This scored 14.433.

Natalia Kapitonova was just behind Melka on AA. For some reason, I'm just not a fan of her. She has overall nice routines, but I find her boring somehow. She also has a nice clean floor, but there's no life in it. This routine scored 13.533.

Anastasia Dmitrieva competed on vault and floor, but for a floor specialist....no. I feel like she has stagnated which is a shame. She was great on floor as a junior, but hasn't really progressed from that. All that potential building up to having a decent routine. I just want to yell at her that "I believe in you, you can do it, just get your shit together!" Nice but forgettable, 13.900 for a hit routine.

Shelgie, who had that great competition in Minsk, had a terrible-bad-no-

good day on day one. Day 2 she was only up on beam, and hit her difficult routine without major issues, 13.900. I don't know what to say. She continues to underwhelm.

Based on this meet, Melka still has a bit of lead over Kapi, at least as an AAer, but Kapi is slowly but surely closing that gap. I hope they can drive each other to better results with a bit of friendly competition.
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More videos from the meet on this channel, and you can find the full results here.