Euros 2016: Senior Podium Training with Team Hot Mess

Today was the senior podium training. Italian Gymnastics Federation (Federazione Ginnastica d'Italia
who have provided excellent coverage of pretty much every meet this year, thank you very much) streamed some of it on Periscope. UEG had a slightly better stream on their Facebook page. The top teams were all in the last session of the day and it looked like Marta's wonderland with at least 3 teams (including Russia and Romania) wearing the same obnoxious shade of pink.

Russia is never the one to put much effort into podium training, but don't worry, bad podium training and qualification promise good results (just remember Glasgow when the qualification went without falls). Aliya was the MVP on beam with 4 falls, round off single back tuck as a dismount, and she even managed to land it crooked and bounce right off the mats to the hard surface of the podium, like Vika in London. Amazing. Spiridoz was surprisingly the one to stay on with Seda and Melka falling too.

Where things got weird was floor. Melka put her hands down on a double pike, Seda was great and Spiridoz did a dance through with layouts. Afan was a no show and it was Aliya, who anchored on floor, with downgraded tumbling, but otherwise okay routine (for a podium training). The style reminded me of her routine last year. I don't know what the fuck was going on with Afan, she was standing on the sidelines with her clothes on. Aliya also managed to take a bad fall on a mustafina-turn (ironically) and seemed to hurt her ankle a bit, but she walked off afterwards without issues. Meanwhile Melka and Seda were trying to get their wolf turns in order.

I didn't get to see much of vault, the camera was focusing on beam and floor, only a bunch of timers and some blurry DTYs from Melka, Aliya and Seda. No falls. Spiridoz vaulted too, still no Afan.

No one did a full bar routine, only parts. Aliya had her inbars back, but battled with her pak (maybe on purpose, maybe not), Melka face-planted a jaeger and Spiridoz just looked sloppy. You'd never guess how brilliant they are on this apparatus based on their training.

Romania looked solid, especially Catalina Ponor. They actually take podium training seriously. The home team also looked good on floor with Giulia Steingruber as their star and Ilaria Kaeslin having a weird mistake with finishing her routine out of bonds (her ending pose).

Valentina Rodionenko announced on R-sport that Aliya is testing her readiness in AA. Seda and Melka will also most likely do AA. I'll update this post when I know more about what's going on with Afan.

UPDATE:

Afan will only do vault, a minor injury apparently. That means Aliya will have to do floor, I'm not really happy about this. They really should have taken Kapi or Masha K. as a traveling alternate to avoid a situation like this...

Here are the startlists for tomorrow:

For Russia it's

• BB: Melnikova, Tutkhalyan, Mustafina 
• FX: Melnikova, Tutkhalyan, Mustafina
• VT: Melnikova, Tutkhalyan, Afanaseyva
• UB: Melnikova, Spiridonova, Mustafina

I don't really agree with this but who cares what I think. I'll tell you anyway... I think Melka should anchor balance beam. Aliya will set the right tone at the start and hopefully not fall, Seda is good in the middle (less nerves) and Melka should make a nice finish. They should also let Spiridoz anchor bars, milk that score to the lasts tenths, they are going to need everything they can get because of floor. Yeah, floor... Aliya probably needs all the time she can get to tape herself together, so let her go last. It's going to get scary no matter what.

say 'hi' to the bear!

The girls are finally in Bern, all in one piece. Bless the tape that holds those fragile ankles together. We should be especially grateful to have Afan there, because apparently she thought that this was a good idea:

Video, jonka Ксю Афанасьева (@ksenia3333) julkaisi 25. 05ta 2016 klo 2.26 PDT

I need to have a serious conversation with you, Ksyu. It's about the Olympics and my poor little fangirl heart that can't take a Russian disaster which you might cause with this sort of behavior. Stop it.

From Russia to Rio: Floor Exercise

4th and final installment of this series, unless I suddenly get super inspired and do a separate one just for individual AA.

FLOOR EXERCISE:

Floor is where Russia loses most against their main rivals. They are lacking in difficulty and creativity (and conditioning) and most of the team struggles to break 14. It's been like this the entire quad and they've done little to fix it, while other teams have made the gap even larger year by year. We can only hope for better results next quad, but if the team administration doesn't change (they currently focus on complaining instead of working), I don't see any major improvements coming. It's starting to look like the situation with Romania and I really don't want Russia to end up like that next quad.

Aaaand... we're done with Kapi and Seda is in!

Valentina Rodionenko and her mind games/drinking/incompetence/need for attention are in full force again and she's naming new teams faster than I can type. It currently means that Natalia Kapitonova has been replaced with Seda Tutkhalyan (yay!), but I wouldn't call it a sure thing, because this is how Team Russia just operates. Consider it a type of Russian Roulette, just instead of bullets, injuries and disgrace.

I don't think I'll post any further changes into separate posts. I'll just keep updating this and analyze how a team with only Vika and Valentina herself would score when Valentina announces it.

I'm so happy that Seda made the cut (as of now at least), but this also makes me really, really nervous. I think this will be a final chance for her. If she succumbs to her nerves once again, Rio will be a definite no go for her. Unless the entire team is hospital she's the only one left. Just please, please hit Princess Tut! But no pressure...

Rough Going at Varna World Challenge Cup 2016

Evgenia Shelgunova and Daria Skrypnik competed at the Varna World Challenge Cup in Bulgaria, and managed to win 3 medals, gold for Dasha on bars and silver and bronze for Shelgie on bars and floor, respectively. I wouldn't go ahead and call it a successful competition though, despite hitting two bar routines, Dasha especially looked really rough. I was in pain just watching her floor from qualifying.

She scored 12.700 for a routine without a fall, so she managed to get deductions for pretty much everything. She looks like she's really winded from the beginning and I have no idea how she managed to land the tumbling, pure grit I suppose, and I really congratulate her for that. I must have taken a lot of willpower to get through that. She obviously could use some a lot of conditioning, but her beam didn't go any better. She fell on her Y-turn, downgraded her dismount and looked close to tears afterwards, so maybe she was hurt? She didn't limp though, and the fall didn't look ad at all. Or maybe it was just a really, bad horrible no good day and she didn't feel right. Sometimes you just have one of those days.

Beefarm Out of the European Championships

The competition is soon upon us and the team is doing their final preparations before traveling to Bern, which means that it's time to start switching gymnasts in and out of the team in a haphazard fashion. This is seems to always be the way they operate. As I suspected when the team was announced, Maria Paseka won't make it. Like Vika she is experiencing back pain and they don't want to rush her to be ready and risk aggravating it. She'll stay home and keep training for Rio.

You might remember that when the team was officially announced, they put in Seda Tutkhalyan as a traveling alternate. However, around the same time there was another interview with Valentina Rodionenko in which she mentioned Natalia Kapitonova as the alternate. I was pretty skeptical about it since it didn't make much sense, but nothing really makes sense in Russian gymnastics, so now Kapi truly is replacing Beefarm (x).

Seda's Death Stare and Quest for Rio

It looks like Seda Tutkhalyan got in trouble. My best guess is that her death stare (the Soviet Gymnastics Bitchface is strong in this one) actually killed someone. What's disturbing is her shirt that says "Mickey made me do it". I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be "Aliya made me do it". Or actually, Valentina...

There is a profile of her on the Russian Olympic Committee webpage and it has plenty of pictures and quotes from past interviews. I'm paraphrasing her quotes here, my Russian is bad so sorry for any mistakes.

The Bible of Gymnastics Gets Its Quadrennial Revamp: Code of Points 2017-2020

I was trying to come up with a funny and clever title for this post, but failed. I almost went with The Newest Edition of the New Testament of the Bible of Gymnastics: Code of Points 2017-2020, but that was just too heavy. And the one I ended up with isn't much lighter.

Anyway. I decided to write a post exploring some of the bigger changes to the CoP (link). I really don't think this new version differs much from the draft they gave us last fall, but my memory is not the best. And I want to warn you that I'm probably going to bring up a lot of my own opinions and then end up being super apologetic about having opinions, but that's just me. You're free to message me with your thoughts, or just comment this post, because I'd love to hear what you think about the changes and what you think caused them.

Fight night with Queen Aliya and the return of Spinstafina (ft. Nabs)

What goes on in Aliyastan doesn't stay there. This post is just a collection of things found on social media.

So one of my readers who watches MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) informed me on tumblr that they saw Aliya on tv during an MMA fight. What?

Kuva, jonka WARRIORMMA (@warriormmashop) julkaisi 30. 04ta 2016 klo 10.51 PDT

Yup, there she is, fabulous as ever. And I guess it's not too far fetched, since her father is a wrestler. You can watch the entire fight here, Aliya shows up around 1:12:20 to give out a trophy. I recommend watching it just for her, because she is looking really, really beautiful. I also love how she is really nicely and formally dressed when everyone else is wearing anything from jeans and t-shirt to underwear. She's the Queen all right. And I bet she could take down those guys just with her stare, no sweat and blood needed. Maybe after she retires from gymnastics?

The Baby Swans for European Championships

Firstly, I don't know how I feel about the scheduling of the junior competition of the European Championships (it's every two years, even-numbered years). On one hand, I like seeing the juniors during an Olympic year because the quadrennium is ending and it gives a glimpse of what is to come during the next one. But on the other hand, the upcoming Olympics takes all the attention away from the juniors because we are so focused on the seniors who are either trying out their upgrades for the Olympics, or battling it out for the last few spots on the teams.

Having juniors at the Euros during odd years would also make sense, because it would give the girls who become seniors during the Olympic year (e.g. Grishy and Melka) a chance to perform on such a big setting before being thrown into the pressures of the senior level right before the Olympics. Most of the Olympic year seniors do get to go to junior Euros, but I think that going two years before becoming senior is entirely different than one year, it makes it less real to me. If that makes any sense. Probably not. Why don't we just have the junior competition every year to settle this out? And while we're at it, the whole AA vs. team situation doesn't make any sense when they still have individual event finals every year. Just seems lazy to me. I remember that there was a good explanation for this weird arrangement, but I don't remember it. Please enlighten me if you know it.


And now I've written half a page before even mentioning anything about the team, it's:

• Anastasia Ilyankova AA (2001) 
• Ulyana Perebinosova AA (2001)
• Elena Eremina AA (2001)
• Varvara Zubova BB/FX (2002)
• Angelina Simakova VT/UB (2002)

This team will definitely try to defend their team gold and fight for top spots in the AA and UB. They should be able to nab some other medals too.

My favorite out of this bunch is Lena. She's very pretty and promising, but unfortunately didn't do her best at nationals. And poor Simakova... She is actually one of Russia's most promising all arounders, but performed pretty underwhelmingly at nationals and wasn't picked for AA. This also means that she won't get to perform on floor, her best apparatus and best chance at finals. Ksenia Klimenko, who basically outshined everyone on this team during nationals, will have to wait for 2018 since she's still too young for Euros. And another great junior who missed the team is Aleksandra Schekoldina. She has the same strengths as ZubZub (BB/FX), but less experience.

The Russians at Osijek World Challenge Cup

Excuse me while I take this great opportunity to rave about Seda Tutkhalyan (because I take any opportunity to rave about her). My girl hit 4 for 4 this weekend, won some medals to top it off and I'm so happy for her! Apparently she was sick prior to the meet so she only competed on beam and bars, but she competed excellently. And this means she didn't ruin her chances for Euros! 

It was a good weekend for all of the Russians actually, except for a tiny hiccup for Kapi.

Just look at this beam routine from Maria Kharenkova!

From Russia to Rio: Balance Beam

Third part part of the series, it's time for the terror of women's gymnastics (be scared, be very scared)...

BALANCE BEAM:

This is where things get really unpredictable. The best gymnasts Russia has on balance beam are currently nowhere near actually making the team, so the lineup is not going to be ideal, no matter how things work out. But when you can only take 5 gymnasts, you can't have the best everywhere. Not to mention that if things go wrong on balance beam, they go really wrong, even if they can put the best gymnasts up.

I really don't think Russia should have any problems putting up a good beam rotation. But they shouldn't have had problems in Glasgow either but somehow managed to screw it up. So we won't know until it's over.