Conqueror of the podium struck again! The Queen graced us with her presence and took the gold. Never underestimate her ever again.
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| Just wait until balance beam... |
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| ...hell yeah! |
VAULT:
It would have been very hard for Giulia Steingruber to lose her vault gold, but she managed to look really anxious and nervous every time we were waiting for someone's score. She always looks nervous, she's rarely relaxed in competition and looks very upset after mistakes. Again, I kind of like this in a gymnast. It's somehow very honest and shows how much they care. I'm sure the gymnasts who don't show emotion and look confident no matter what care just as much, but it's nice to see different reactions.
Giulia performed her Rudi very well, but landed piked and off alignment on her DTY and took a big step off the mat. Claudia Fragapane brought the ugly. Her DTY was as good as she has done it, great. But the Lopez? How did that even get credited? It was at times straddled or piked or tucked but never laid out. Ksenia Afanasyeva looked positively beautiful after that, and we know her form isn't the best either.
It was Katarzyna Jurkowska-Kowalska who showed everyone what a nice straight position looks like, but landed her second vault short and put her hands down. Ellie Downie came in and took the silver easily with her power and great form. She was even close to the gold, which is an achievement considering her D-score was much lower than Giulia's.
UNEVEN BARS:
It didn't help Russia, because Becky Downie came to the finals with a 6.9 D-score and her eyes on that gold. She hit her routine brilliantly, but then annoyed me with her dismount yet again. It's low and feels like she's trying to rip the high bar off with her. She got a massive score of 15.500 and Aliya Mustafina knew she couldn't match that. She downgraded her difficulty and focused instead of hitting a clean beautiful routine, which she did.
Spiridoz had the advantage of going last, but even though she did her best routine of the year, it wasn't quite enough to catch Becky. The rest of the rotation was pretty mediocre, you could see the top three competitors were miles above anybody else.
BALANCE BEAM:
Aliya really wasn't kidding around today, she was coming out of the UB finals not caring about the result and ready for balance beam. She looked amazing, confident and pretended that those few balance checks didn't happen and I believed it. So did the judges. 15.100!!! Make that beam your bitch, Tsaritsa. Aliya wasn't the only thing making the final special, I don't even remember when we last had a beam final in a major competition with no falls.
Ilaria Kaeslin was as beautiful as ever, she's really been a rock for her team in Bern. Marine Brevet wasn't quite as good and steady as her teammate and Gaelle Mys had a scary dismount. Becky had a lot of nervy wobbles and I have no idea how she managed to save everything. But she did and it was a great way of redeeming herself after the team final.
Melka went last and was pretty much shaking, she was that nervous. Based on her scores at this competition it would have been very easy for her to grab the bronze, and quite easy to grab the silver, but it wasn't meant to be. She had many balance checks and a really bad dismount. I was afraid she was going to hit her head on the beam after landing. Her double pike is always high and pretty, so that was a bit of a shock.
FLOOR EXERCISE:
Cata was still nervous on floor, a weird day for her. She was the only one from her team fighting for medals, so maybe it got to her, even with all of her experience and confidence. I don't know, it was just very unlike her to look so unsure of herself. It was enough for bronze, but Ellie surpassed her for the silver only by a tenth with her confident routine.
We continued the day's Giulia-fest on floor and she made the home crowd crazy with her great performance, and a score of 15.200. There is no way in hell that her execution was 8.800 (just look at the slow motion footage of her that they were continuously showing, some other gymnasts were scored on an entirely different scale), but I think her routine was worth the gold, so I'm going to shut up now.
I don't know how Frags keeps her ankles intact, but I'm sure Russia would pay a fortune for that knowledge. She wasn't quite as delightful and entertaining as usual, and she landed her last pass almost to her knees, she's probably tired after many days of competition. Her execution score suffered and kept her out of the top 3.
Mara Titarsolej is not quite as good on floor as her turn-tastic teammates, but she was charming in the in middle of a final mostly filled with powergymnasts. Marine Brevet made some mistakes, as did Gaelle Mys and we had to suffer through Amelie Foellinger's DLO 100 times during the highlight reel that was repeated at every possible moment (Giulia's double double also kept me cringing).
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LINKS:
You can find full results HERE.
Recordings of the competition are HERE.
I'll be controversial and say I have little issue with Giulia's 8.8 but do with Downie getting nearly the same e-score for her hard routine as she did her easier ones. Nope. But I didn't mind much because Spiri needs a kick in the ass to try and upgrade if she wants to make her case for Rio as a one-eventer.
ReplyDeleteI'm not emotionally ready for the Queen to retire.
I counted around 6 tenths of deductions for Giulia's first pass only, it makes me crazy. Floor should never have that high execution, unless you're Simone, or Vika in London AA. Especially if everyone isn't getting the same marks. But I know I should just get past it, because she still won fair and square. And home scoring does happen.
ReplyDeleteI assume you are talking about Becky? I'm a bit torn about it. I didn't see it as a huge problem, Aliya's and Spiri's scores went up too. And the problem with Becky is, that even when I go back and see her routine, I don't see that much wrong with it, there's not too many deductions. Although since Spiri was so little behind Becky and any small change in the score would have made a difference, I'm looking forward to seeing the individual scores from the judges.
I really prefer the Russian style with their calm and effortless looking swing, attention to detail and long lines/extension (My Love Letter to Vika's Bars :D), while Becky's work is really rushed and looks everything but effortless, I get out of breath just watching it. But I feel like the Code doesn't really care about that, it's just an opinion :(
But yeah, Spiri needs to start working her grips off. I don't know if there's anything she could upgrade without major composition changes, her routine is built to its max value. She'd have to make a more drastic change, like a completely new skill. There's her dismount though, but I don't think it has enough potential for a Fabrichinova.
I suspect I'm a bit biased for Giulia because I so badly want to believe someone other than Aly Raisman will take silver on floor ;) And I do think her routine works well for her.
DeleteYes, I meant Becky. I'm not a fan of either Downie on bars, well I mean Becky when she tries the harder routine. It just looks frantic and borderline out-of-control every time, sort of like some of Tweddle's wilder attempts. Like she never really nails any element because she's rushing into the next one. But I like what Tweddle usually attempted routine composition-wise far more.
Again, I didn't mind too much, though I feel for Spiri since people were already ragging on her for being subbed in, and then she "failed" to win despite what I think was her best routine this year. I'm just surprised we haven't seen her attempt anything new since Glasgow, even domestically. But I agree I'm not sure what she could try, her dismount is easily the worst part of her routine and I don't think she can pull off anything harder either.
Side note, Aliya and Grebs act like an old married couple and I LOVE IT.
Yes, I love seeing Aliya boss Grebs around in the arena <3
DeleteThe Russians have been super conservative ever since they fired Aleksandrov, so I'm not at all surprised that Spiri hasn't upgraded since Glasgow. The only ones regurlarly learning and trying out new skills (something else than DLOs and Aliya's endless beam tune-ups and turn combos) in the senior team are Ulyankina's gymnasts, and they all have their fair share of other problems. You can see it on floor, where Russia is miles behind of what they were doing last quad. And just think about Aliya's bars, in 2013 right after London she was doing markelov's again, and giengers and added the seitz at Worlds. Now it's all gone. Although she did said she still has someting to add before Rio.
There is a minor chance for surprise upgrades, since most of the upgrades they had in London only surfaced at the Russian Cup. So perhaps we'll see some there. But I'm doubtfull.
Sorry about the rant, I went a bit off topic :D
Haha off topic is fine :)
DeleteUgh the seitz :( Yes it's a stupidly undervalued skill that's way more of a deduction trap so I get why they took it out, but I wish she'd kept working on her 2013 routine. The biggest issue with it (besides the fact that she showed up to worlds in not-great-shape so her execution was a little off across the board except for that glorious final beam) was that Russia was told to send an A-team to the stupid universiade, so she only started doing her worlds routine a month or so before Antwerp. So naturally it looked a little less polished and it was no surprise she didn't hit it super well in EF and gave away a gold medal. She needed more time with it.
I kind of worry history will repeat itself in that sense unless she's actually been working on her bar upgrades this whole time.
Spiri's out of luck if Vika is back. Though to be honest, I recognize the need for Vika on the team but I'm not super excited to see her go. I've just been kind of.....over her?.....since the mess in Glasgow. I can't really explain it, but there's others I would rather get the opportunity if she's not stellar and hitting everything next month.