Oh right, gymnastics. I was trying to explain why I didn't post anything about gymnastics this week. But nothing too important really happened, just a lot of little things so I'm just going to scramble together all the news here in one post. We have lots of great instagram action from Round Lake, Shelgie being Shelgie and Valentina not knowing what's going on. So just the usual.
Let's start with the most important: Rio. Rio Test Event to be precise. Actually, there's no test event for the Russians, because they are not going.
As you might know, Valentina announced that they'd send Angelina Melnikova and Natalia Kapitonova to the test event sometime last year, and everyone was laughing at the super early decision. But I guess Valentina is laughing now because they've pulled out completely. There's no word on why, but I suspect it's either because Nationals are shortly after it and they want everyone there (it's their most important qualifier for European Championships) or Zika. They've already qualified a team, but trying out the Olympic arena would have probably been amazing for the younger gymnasts, especially if one of them makes the team. Too bad, I would have loved to see them competing.
Something else weird from Valentina this week: Aliya Mustafina might be competing in Stuttgart World Cup. It's in two weeks so I don't know how. Miracle recovery? Or maybe they just want publicity by announcing that she might compete? They announced her competing in everything last year even though she pulled out of basically everything. They just like to dangle the possibility in front of us desperate fans. She's traveling with the team to the competition, but I really doubt she'll compete. Have me eat my words, Aliya!
What else... Oh Shelgie! Evgenia Shelgunova competed at a small meet in Minsk, Belarus and did very well. She has an impressive beam set, both difficult and steady, but her bars are still... very Shelgie-ish. Her pak is perhaps a bit improved, and she has a new double layout dismount, super arched of course. I could not hate her floor music more if I tried. You can see her routines on this YouTube channel. On a side note: Someone asked me this week if I was a gymnast who I would be and I immediately thought... Shelgie! She's a disaster, everything kind of wrong, but somehow she manages to come by and actually do quite well for herself and I will never understand how. This is me.
I posted earlier about Gymnix being soon, and indeed, the little ones have arrived in Canada.
Or everyone except Varvara Zubova. She's still supposed to be going, but maybe she's so fierce that they had to reserve a special flight just for her.
And finally, a quick roundup of instagramming from Round Lake, because there were lots of gems this week.
Daria Spiridonova has incredible leaps on floor. Really, really beautiful. But because of my black soul, my first though was that maybe she should concentrate on something she isn't good at for a change, like adding some difficulty and tumbling? She clearly wants to be an all arounder, so she needs to work on her weak areas too instead of just oversplits. I'd be more excited over a video with her testing out some new skills.She's also been cute with Aliya, and hard at work on bars with Aliya. A busy week. And talking about Aliya, her double layout is looking so good!
Fine, it's on airtrack, but she's only been tumbling for a month and I love her form on that. So much better than last year.
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Okay, now that I have my gymnastics all up to speed, back to procrastinating with the thesis.
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