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.

But let's break it down...

Vault: 

• This team is actually pretty strong on vault
• Lena and Ulya both have (not-so-great) DTYs
• Sima and Nastia both have good FTYs. 
• Sima also has two nicely executed front handspring vaults (piked 1/2 and 1/1) and I hope she makes the finals. I would have put Sima to finals last year without a second thought, but if Lena and Ulya perform the DTYs to their feet, they are probably going to outscore her. She needs to do the piked 1/1 to score better than them.

Uneven bars:

• Bars are going to be a bit tough (tough for Russia is still good to any other team). This team should be able to put up 3 good routines, but they are quite inconsistent on this apparatus.  
• Nastia's routine is just amazing, her release moves give me life. She definitely has a good chance of individual gold on bars, she should score somewhere around 15. 
• Ulya and Lena are a long way behind her, but will try to two-per-country each other out of the UB finals. Lena has a clean and typically Russian routine, Ulya on the other has an exciting action-packed routine, but her execution leaves a lot to be desired. They both fluctuate with their scores and struggle with inconsistency, but hopefully stay above 14. 
• Simakova's routine is relatively easy, but her basics are amazing (HANDSTANDS!). Hopefully she can build on that in the future.

Balance beam:

• Balance beam might be a bit sketchy, but it's sketchy for every team out there. There just aren't that many consistent juniors on beam. That said, Russia usually has plenty of good beam workers at junior level, but this team only has one that I would consider a specialist, and that's Varya. This team certainly has potential for 2 spots in beam finals and 3 scores in the 14s, 2 in high 14s for team final, but we'll see how it goes.
• So finally we get ZubZub into action. She's truly amazing to watch on beam, such a performer and her routine is very well constructed. Unfortunately she fell on 2 out of her 3 routines at nationals, hopefully we don't get a repeat of that at Euros. Her execution might also take a hit from the international judges, but she should be able to make finals if she hits. 
• And Lena is just beautiful. Beautiful form, nice rhythm and no hesitation before elements. She's relatively consistent too, I really hope she makes the finals. 
• I'm not too big of a fan of Nastia's beam, but she's not a disaster either. 
• And Ulya is... a mystery. She has a terrible wolf turn that needs to go away. Then she does some basic things very nicely and cleanly, but suddenly things get wild and out of control fast and I don't know what's going on. I guess she's still figuring it out. 
• Sima's routine is okay, it's pretty clean and consistent, but she doesn't get to perform it unless they reconsider the AA spots.

Floor exercise:

• Not the best apparatus for Russia. I'm expecting a bunch of 13s here (4 of these girls could potentially score above 14, but I'm not sure if that will happen), but it's okay for juniors. This team doesn't really have a standout routine, the top girls are pretty equal on their scoring potential. When it comes to performance value though, ZubZub wins easily. 
• ZubZub will hopefully earn a spot for floor finals. Just like beam, her floor is charming and well-choreographed and she gives a good performance. She's also consistent.
• Uliya's tumbling is relatively simple but clean, and her routine is nice too. Her music makes me crazy though.
• Nastia upgraded her tumbling and it was pretty messy at Gymnix, her performance suffered too. Hopefully she's had some time now to settle into her routine.
• Lena had some difficult upgrades this year (DLO!) and looked to be struggling with stamina. She's still lovely here and something about her style and routine (and especially music) really reminds me of 2009 Aliya... It makes me all nostalgic.
• Floor is actually Sima's best apparatus, but unfortunately she doesn't get to do it at Euros. It's a bit weird when you consider that she scores just as good as ZubZub and Ulya and mostly better than Nastia and Lena. Anyway, she has a very standard junior music and choreo, but the routine is enjoyable and she's very clean and precise with her moves, kind of like ZubZub.