Euros 2016: a terrible, horrible, no good day ending with a gold medal

The junior all around was a wild ride from start to finish, and not in a good way. But do you see the logic? Good qualification, bad competition! It's the way of Russia and we saw that today. Hopefully we'll see the opposite from the seniors tomorrow.

They only one from the top group who had a good competition was Martina Basile from Italy. She qualified 6th, but gave good, consistent performances throughout the competition rising all the way to a bronze medal. The silver medalist Lynn Genhart from Switzerland also did amazing. She qualified way back in 14th, but improved her score by almost two points with brilliant nearly error-free routines in front of her home audience. She was less than 2 tenths from gold, very impressive.

But the winner and gold medalist was the Russian Elena Eremina. She qualified first and ended up with the gold medal, but it was a rocky road. Unlike the other medalists, she was over 2 points behind her qualification score, which tells you pretty much how the day went. Congratulations to her anyway, what was a bad day for her, was still worth gold and the title of an European All Around Champion, quite an achievement. She was the best because she sucked the least, sometimes that's enough. Her total was 54.550.

The competition followed the normal format with the top group starting on vault. The other baby swan competing, Anastasia Ilyankova (qualified second), vaulted a 1.5 instead of her usual FTY and the risk wasn't worth the reward. Her vault was floaty and pretty in the air, but she had no idea where the landing was, wound up short and sat it down. Lena didn't do much better. They didn't show her vault, but I read somewhere that she threw her fairly new DTY, under-rotated it badly and had to take several steps to the side. The judges also downgraded it to a 1.5.

So the competition was off to a bad start for both of my little swans. They were way behind in the standings, but had uneven bars to make up for it. If only. This was Nastia's best apparatus and best chance to jump into medal contention, but it wasn't meant to be. She was super late on her clear hip circle 1/1, but somehow managed to save her tkachev, I was pretty impressed. Her execution score however suffered and the 14.300 wasn't quite enough to get her back into the competition. Lena did even worse and suffered a huge form break on her toe full, fell, but hold on to the bar and managed to get back into her routine after a few empty swings. She got 13.400 for her effort. They weren't the only ones with problems, Ioana Crisan from Romania had a really scary fall, basically shooting off the high bar and tumbling to the ground off the mats, but got herself together and finished her routine bravely.

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, it was time for beam. And on beam, things can always get worse. Lena continued her series of near-falls landing her front tuck really low almost sitting on the beam. She didn't let that stop her, just continued and finished her routine well enough, big step on dismount. It was Nastia who suffered a minor major breakdown. She started off extremely well hitting her layout and turn near perfectly, but she had to put her hands down on her side erial+LOSO series almost hitting her head on the beam. Afterwards she was rattled and fell again on a front aerial, but finished her exercise confidently with the audience cheering her on. 3rd qualifier and a medal contender Alice Kinsella from Great Britain unfortunately also fell on her acro series, so did a few others and Lena weirdly found herself standing in second place going to the last apparatus, floor.

I was pretty much ready to have my little swans scratch the floor to avoid any serious disasters, but they were persistent and both gave great performances, no major issues. It was too late for Nastia to rise up the ranks, but Lena showed that fighting until the end can pay off. She could have easily jumped off the bars or beam and finished off the medals. But she didn't, she fought for everything today and came out the winner in the end, I'm so proud of her. And poor Nastia had very little time to recover from her balance beam fiasco, but recovered and delivered better floor than in qualification, amazing.

Here is Lena's beautiful floor routine that clinched her the gold medal. It's not as good as her qualifying routine, but who cares. After the day she had, this made me incredibly happy. Just look at that first landing!

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LINKS:
The recorded livestream is HERE.
The complete results are HERE.