My Favorite Routines from This Quadrennium (I)

I've been meaning to do a compilation post about my favorite Russian routines from this quad (2013-2016) ever since I recovered from the Olympics, but procrastination got in the way. I'll do this one apparatus at a time, so the first part is going to be a bit boring. There's only so much you can get out of vault, especially with Russia.

VAULT

Obviously this moment had to be included, Maria Paseka winning gold on vault at the 2015 World Championships. Look how far she's come after London, her amanar was basically a gymternet joke back then, but now it's solid. And to think that she was out with injuries for almost two years prior to 2015, but came back with a cheng. Not to mention winning silver at the 2016 Olympics, and vaulting the amanar that clinched Russia the Olympic silver during the last rotation of the team final.

This was Beefarm's amanar during the Glasgow team final, a few days before becoming the 2015 vault World Champion. To me this is probably Masha's best vault ever. It has that 3 tenth hop she didn't have in the individual final, but this one is just floats forever in the air and is completely rotated for once. 

Now this one is definitely a highlight. Just imagine: It is the post-Olympic year, when countries are scrambling to get together enough gymnasts for a team, the international field isn't even that competitive and everyone is still trying to recover from the previous year. It is also Ksenia Afanasyeva's 3rd quad as an elite senior and she shows up to Universiade, of all the competitions, with an amanar, a vault she has never done before. How, why, what??? That's the magic of the Afanar.

Afan returned to competition with a much better Afanar at the 2015 European Championships and took the vault bronze for her efforts. Gotta love her. 

Alla Sosnitskaya made a quick rise from a Russian nobody to a Russian with a cheng in less than a year, quite an accomplishment. Considering she had a beautiful DTY and lopez, her cheng was really messy. But this was right after she learned the vault, her first time competing it at her first World Championships, so it was still a work in progress. I believe that if she didn't get injured and instead had the time to refine this for a few years, it would have looked great by Rio. One of the many, many sad storied in Russian gymnastics.

This is here just because I mentioned that she had a beautiful DTY and lopez. There are some minor flaws but overall, such nice vaulting for a Russian. And such nice vaulting for someone coached by Ulyankina.

Naturally Aliya Mustafina needs to make an appearance on every list. This is actually a super bad vault from her, her legs are all over the place and the landing is very bad compared to her usual near sticks (watch her vaults from Rio for better ones), but I picked this one just because it was a memorable moment. This was at the 2014 European Championships team final, Aliya had been putting an ankle surgery off for a few years, first because of the Olympics, and then because the depth of the Russian team was at an all time low for some time. She shouldn't have even been at the European Championships, but without her, the team wouldn't have even medaled. So she went to compete bars and beam (and did only that in qualifying), but a vault was desperately needed from her in the team final. So while I watched this at home, terrified and thinking about Kerri Strug, she vaulted and survived, for the team. You can see her limping noticeably afterwards, ouch.

Then we have the one and only, Tatiana Nabieva. She officially retired in 2013 after a bad performance at the Worlds, but it didn't stop her from returning a year later when the Russians were in desperate need of anyone capable of a consistent DTY. And this is actually an excellent vault from her, Nabs-y block, but powerful and a great landing.

On to my problematic favorite, Seda Tutkhalyan, this time at the 2016 European Championships team final. She spent the beginning of 2016 crashing vaults left and right as only she can, and then did this at the most important moment of the season so far, breaking 15 in an international competition and contributing to the team gold with their best score on vault. No way to figure her out. I also kind of love the awkward landing. She usually bounces back with a huge hop, but now it's like she hit the ground in a better angle quite unexpectedly and just didn't know what to do with that. So she just propelled all that energy upwards. But great job landing right on the line.

And here's Princess Tut winning her first individual international medal at the senior level, on vault of course.
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And that concludes vault. Not much, I know. I could have added something from the Olympics, but the IOC copyright department is still denying us any proof that the Olympics actually happened, so much for making it a memorable event.