Meet the Team: Seda Tutkhalyan

Seda Tutkhalyan (Cyrillic: Седа Тутхалян, Armenian: Սեդա Թութխալյան) is the second youngest member of the team, born in 1999 in Gyumri, Armenia, but her family moved to Moscow when she was young. She is 17 years old and a second year senior with plenty of international experience under her belt. She's also interestingly (almost) an Olympic veteran, having represented Russia at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing when she was just a junior. She came out as the best gymnast of the competition, with all around and uneven bars gold and floor exercise silver. She is also both junior and senior European team champion, and European Games team champion and vault silver medalist. She's Russian national vault champion and AA silver medalist. She was also part of Russia's 2015 World Championships team and qualified to the AA and beam finals, but didn't win any medals.

She is a tiny powerhouse and the innovator of the team, not a typical Russian gymnast. Her gymnastics is quick and dynamic, and her energetic routines and selection of skills differ a lot from her teammates. She goes for the difficult and risky instead of the safe and pretty, but she still has something "Russian" about her execution. She is coached by the same coach as another Olympic team member Maria Paseka, and they share some similarities in their gymnastics. She is a talented gymnast with huge potential, but is also the endless source of frustration to her fans and coaches alike. She is very inconsistent and regular underachiever, rarely rising up to that huge potential. She tends to make nervous mistakes under pressure, a great example of a so-called headcase.

Seda's strength is all around, but she's the team's "third all arounder", and as such an unlikely candidate to make the final. She's not quite as balanced as her teammates Angelina Melnikova and Aliya Mustafina, but she's capable of difficult routines and good scores on every apparatus. Her standout event is beam, where she has one the most difficult routines in the world. She's amazing to watch when she's on, she's confident and sure-footed and makes the difficult skills look very easy. She's also fun to watch in competition. She has moments of happiness and relief that light up the arena, but also one of the best gamefaces out there. The Russian gymnasts are famous for their "Bitchface", and Seda has one of the best ones in the team, affectionately called her murderface. Just watch her preparing to vault.

She is the third European Champion in her close-knit family, both her father and brother are wrestlers. Her ultimate goal is to become an Olympic Champion, and naturally she wants to be more successful than her father (3-time World Champion). Her favorite apparatus is uneven bars and her idol is Yelena Zamolodchikova. She is trying to learn to cope with her nerves, but finds it very difficult.

Seda's difficulty scores for Rio:

• VT: 5.8 and 5.6
• UB: 6.5
• BB: 6.7
• FX: 6.0
• AA: 25

Vault: She has a DTY (double twisting yurchenko) as her first vault, and a Lopez as her second one, a pretty standard set for an elite. She's powerful and has good execution in the air, but has occasional mistakes, like sloppy form on block and uncontrolled landings. She's a slightly better vaulter than Melka, but more inconsistent so it remains to be seem which one will be up in team finals, most likely Melka. Seda could make the vault finals, but doesn't have enough difficulty to contend for a medal. She should score around 15 for a hit vault.

Uneven Bars: This is actually traditionally her weakest apparatus, surprising for a Russian. She has a difficult routine and good form and execution, but doesn't have the natural swing of her teammates. However, her routine composition is very different from the typical Russian bars, which makes her interesting to watch on this event. She has big skills and releases, but has been inconsistent with her new upgraded routine and we most likely won't get to see it during team final. She should get high 14s for a hit routine.

Balance Beam: This event is why she's on the team. Her routine is very difficult and exciting favoring big skills (she has a G-dismount and F-acro series) instead of connections. She's capable of a wobble-free confident routine, but unfortunately has a very bad track record of hitting under pressure. She's fine in smaller meets, but fell on both of her routines during the European Championships. She usually falls once, but hits her routine flawlessly after it, which means that she gets better scores even with a fall than some of the other Russian candidates fighting for her spot on the team. If you're wondering why they would take someone who has about 70% chance of falling and use them during the team final, welcome to Russian gymnastics. Everyone else is either injured or would do even worse. She could get above 15 for a hit routine, but for a routine with a fall, around 14. Light your candles and cross your fingers for her to hit.

Floor Exercise: Seda's floor routine is inspired by her Armenian heritage and is one of the better choreographed Russian floor routines this year, if not the best. Instead of her earlier cheeky routines, this one is more dramatic, but just as energetic and suits her gymnastics very well. She's a good performer and her tumbling is good and dynamic, but relatively easy like the rest of the Russians. She's consistent on floor and rarely has big mistakes, like falls, but she gives away lots of points with her uncontrolled landings and spins. She's definitely going to be in the team final floor lineup and if she hits, she should get low 14s.

Medal Prospects: TF, BB

She has a big chance of missing the beam final, not only because she's really inconsistent, but because her more consistent teammates can score just as high as her if they hit. But if she makes the beam final and hits her routine there, she could medal. If Melka's injury takes her out of the AA finals, Seda will take her spot there. She'd have to have a really good day with perfectly hit routines to get to the medals though.