European Championships 2017: Podium training non-disaster

The podium training today was extremely short on disasters, I'm not sure how to feel about it. Russia is supposed to be awful in podium training, be generally lazy and sloppy with no full routines and something like 5 falls for each gymnast on every apparatus, but maybe the newbies haven't gotten the memo. Then again, Beefarm didn't feel like looking like shit either, and she's a hardcore veteran.

Meet the Team: European Championships 2017

The 2017 European Artistic Gymnastics Championships will take place in Cluj, Romania between April 19 and 23. There is no team competition this year and the gymnasts will compete for individual medals only. The federations are allowed to send 4 gymnasts and the team for Russia is Angelina Melnikova, Natalia Kapitonova, Elena Eremina and Maria Paseka. This team is very young and inexperienced with Maria Paseka being the only veteran, and two of the gymnasts having never competed in any major competitions at the senior level. It's going to be interesting to see how they do, and if any new stars will rise.

I thought I'd really quickly introduce the Russian team to those of you not as familiar with them as us gymternet regulars.

Russian Junior Nationals 2017: The Invisible Competition

Junior Nationals was last weekend and I was hoping for some videos to appear before going over it, but there are still not that many and I'm not sure if any more will show up. The story of this blog, it seems. There aren't any pictures either, it's like the whole thing didn't even happen. I added some pics from Jesolo instead.

So there's not that much to write about, scores and "she usually looks beautiful on this apparatus" only go so far, but here's a quick recap anyway. As usual, the juniors are split in two groups based on Russia's national sports merits, MC (the older and more accomplished girls) and KMC (younger and less accomplished girls, mostly those born in 2004).

From front: Varvara Zubova, Ksenia Klimenko, Anastasia Agafonova and Valeria Saifulina. Look who's hiding again, what a surprise.

Round Lake Update with Grebs and the Euros team

The main news this time is, that Evgeny Grebenkin announced the Russian team for European Championships. I'm going to have to take a guess, that he locked up V-Rod in a closet in order to get to say anything to the media, let alone do something as Valentina as announce teams. Crazy. I'm also going to take a guess that V-Rod already has taken action about this, scratched her way out of that closet and given 100 possibly semi-offensive and probably conflicting interviews to make up for Grebs' one, but I'm not going to even bother to check. Whatever.

The (current, nothing is ever final with Russia) team consists of the main suspects, Angelina Melnikova, Elena Eremina and Natalia Kapitonova, but saw the surprise return of Maria Paseka. Masha hasn't competed since the Olympics. She took a break because of back problems and because after completing two Olympic cycles, she really earned it. But she returned to training in December and was supposed to compete at nationals, but didn't. This is one of those cases when I'm not going to really believe that she's competing until I see her marching to the arena with the audience cheering and music playing, but I'm not opposed to her selection either. Even if she's semi-back, she should be able to medal easily. I just really don't want to see another Moscow 2013 from her. It was dreadful and heartbreaking to watch and please, no more. So I really, really hope that she's ready this time. We haven't really seen anything from her apart from some training footage of a bad DTY.

The selection of Kapi, Melka and Lena makes perfect sense and I'm happy that for once the veterans are (nearly) gone and we're seeing a young team of 2000-2001-born girls. It should give them some motivation and the opportunity to rise to the occasion and prove that Russia is not just Aliya Mustafina. That they can achieve something without her and don't need her, Ksenia Afanasyeva and to some extent Viktoria Komova to carry their entire team and earn all of their medals. Of course there's a 90% chance that they will only prove that Russia is yet again nothing without the veterans, but let's stay optimistic.

Viral Infections and City of Jesolo Trophy 2017

It's only appropriate that right when the Russians make their grand return to Jesolo, Flo blocks everything. Gone are the days when Italian Gymnastics Federation streamed everything for everyone and we had hours and hours of footage from the meet. Ugh.

1. USA 2. Brazil 3. Russia

But first... The Russians didn't have the best time leading up to this competition. In another WTF RUSSIA?!? moment less than two weeks ago, their training base Round Lake was closed and the athletes evacuated after a rotavirus epidemic hit the base. Apparently during the same morning, around 50 athletes from several different sports (the training base has several national teams training there) fell ill with vomiting, fever and diarrhea. Because the athletes were from different sports and training halls, they suspected that the food in the dining hall was contaminated. I guess it could be a swimming pool too. There are some conflicting reports about whether or not any of the gymnasts were sick too (because when are there not conflicting reports about team Russia?), but they were evacuated along everyone else on the base to some old camp grounds, obviously not good for training. I don't know whether or not to laugh or cry. V-Rod tried some stupid bullshit about everyone traveling to different countries and catching the virus there, but obviously when there's so many people falling ill exactly at the same time, the source is somewhere on the base. She probably herself infected everyone on purpose to make them lose weight. But the training halls were inspected and disinfected and they resumed training fast.

Stuttgart World Cup: Spiri as a vault specialist?

Russia won the Team Challenge! But let's not get too excited...

1. Russia 2. Germany 3. Spain
This was the only picture of the podium, sorry Spain :(

The DTB Pokal Team Challenge final was yesterday and Russia showed up in one of my favorite leotards. They were promising me good things with that leo, but didn't deliver. They did win by several points, but it was not because they were really good.

Stuttgart World Cup: See, she didn't die

Everyone seemed to be a bit very scared about Angelina Melnikova competing at the Stuttgart World Cup, but she did fine. She survived. More than that, she wasn't even bad, she was perfectly in shape for a World Cup competition and her preparation for Euros seems to be going well. And this is why you don't go into panic mode after Russian domestic competitions. A statement I have to keep repeating after every Russian Nationals and Russian Cup, because they're just that bad and will probably always be. But the team will still usually get it somewhat together before an international meet.

1. Tabea Alt 2. Angelina Melnikova 3. Morgan Hurd

Stuttgart World Cup: Not getting surgery this time

I always find it a tiny bit confusing when the Russians go to Germany and it's not for some medical treatment. But this time they're in Stuttgart, Germany, trying desperately to prepare for Europeans. Natalia Kapitonova, Elena Eremina, Daria Spiridonova and Lilia Akhaimova are competing at the Team Challenge, and Angelina Melnikova is taking part in the World Cup competition. The original team included Seda Tutkhalyan, and switching her with Kapi probably means that Seda is a lock for Euros already. They're testing Lilia, Lena and Kapi (and Spiri) trying to figure out the rest of the team.

The team with American Infiltrator Morgan Hurd

A Look into the Near Future of Russian Gymnastics with Andrei Rodionenko

An anon sent me this interview, and someone asked if I could translate it. It was actually conducted a few weeks before the Russian Championships and mostly focuses on the controversial replacement of Leonid Arkayev with Sergei Zelikson, but there are a few questions about the national team. I'll go over the Mordovia part rather quickly paraphrasing the interview and concentrate on what he says about the Russian and European Championships. 

I'll also add some other interviews that he did recently to the end of this post. Spoiler: He disagrees with Valentina about the European team. According to him, it isn't even named yet and won't be for another month.

Russian Championships 2017: Post-Competition Round-Up

Now that the competition is over, let's take a look at what we saw. You also sent me plenty of links, so I think I'll go over some of them too. Oh, and Valentina Rodionenko has obviously announced the European Championships team that will change 1000 times before the actual competition, so we'll get to that too.

But let's start with a short interview about Aliya's impressions of the competition, because she managed to sum up my own opinion too:

Not Drawn to the Podium

Let us remind you that Aliya Mustafina is in a great position for a girl - the 22-year-old athlete is pregnant and taking a break from her sports career. At the Russian Championships in Kazan, Aliya was not only the guest of honor, but also did commentary for the competition. 

-How does it feel to be only in the role of a cheerleader and commentator? You don't feel drawn to the podium yourself?
Not yet, doesn't temp me [smiles]. I'm content with what I have. I'm very glad that during this pause in my career I still have the opportunity to be around gymnastics.  

-What kind of impression did the championships in Kazan leave?
The organization of the event was of the highest level. I liked everything, and from the athletes' point of view, I can tell that they agreed. Kazan gave a great opportunity to prepare for the upcoming international competitions. It was evident that the girls who competed at the Olympics are still getting back in shape. But those who are only aspiring to get to the national team, showed quite good results. This is just the beginning of the season, there are new rules it is too early to make any conclusions. 

-What can you say about the changes made to the rules of artistic gymnastics, the evaluation of difficulty in particular?
I cannot say if it will make the athlete's job easier or more difficult. The fact that they lowered the baseline of difficulty score 0.5 points has no effect. And as for the connections, you can get used to everything and it will all work out. [note: I have no idea if I translated this sentence anywhere near correctly, probably not]

Russian Championships 2017: At least it's over now

I think I ended yesterday's post with "Let's hope that tomorrow won't ruin my good mood." so naturally it had to happen. Day 2 of the event finals was another day of falls after falls. It was pretty much what I expected on beam, but I was still hoping that they'd surprise me positively, like they did on bars. But no such luck.

Russian Championships 2017: Meanwhile in Kazan...

It was a rough start for everyone...

Russian Championships 2017: Finally a good day

Today was Day 1 of event finals, and we had a high quality stream again. Too bad that whoever was responsible of the stream, didn't really care about WAG and kept the cameras on the men. They actually tried to show both by having a tiny box in the corner of the screen with a different footage, but gave up on that within two minutes and went back to MAG. The Russian WAG team is much more accomplished than the men, just saying. At least show both tomorrow.

I would have really loved to see more, because it looked like the girls were finally, finally getting their life together. Not only did we have plenty of acceptable and good performances, but there were even a few brilliant ones. 

As a plus, we had Aliya Mustafina commentating. She has such a relaxing and soothing voice that I think she could make even beam finals less nerve wracking. She will be put to the ultimate test tomorrow.

Russian Championships 2017: It got worse

Today was the AA final and we actually had the best stream we've had in awhile. Too bad the performances weren't able to match it. I'm really missing Aliya right about now. She usually looked fabulous no matter how small a meet, and even when she wasn't ready for a competition, she failed with poise and elegance. I can't really say the same about this lot. When they suck, they just suck. Ugh. But it wasn't really as terrible as it seems, I still think that they can get their shit at least somewhat together by Euros.

Although Elena Eremina's face says it all about this meet.

AA: 1. Natalia Kapitonova 2. Elena Eremina 3. Evgenia Shelgunova

Russian Championships 2017: Sluggishness AND upgrades aka Best of Both Worlds

So I predicted either sluggish B-grade gymnastics or surprising upgrades and I got both? Thank you Team Russia!

Melka is eyeing the position of a new Russian Queen now that Aliya is out of the way. 

Russian Championships started out with a combined team competition and individual qualifications with Moscow taking the team title ahead of Central (2nd) and St. Petersburg (3rd), and Elena Eremina leading the all around with a first day score of 55.366. Clearly Kalugina had her confused with someone else as she looks relatively injury-free and right now is a serious contender for the Russian European Championships team. She's actually a serious contender for the European AA podium with the way things are going.

Russian Championships 2017: Your regularly scheduled "everyone is injured or dying" -pre-competition update

Russian sports journalist Natalia Kalugina wrote a facebook post about the Russian team ahead of the National Championships, taking place in just a few days, and as usual with Team Russia, the situation is nothing short of dystopian.

That's it. The cycle has ended. Another began. On Tuesday the team will leave for Russian Championships in Kazan. Almost none the Olympians will compete at the start of the new season. Head coach Andrei Rodionenko softly says: "And what did you expect? Olympic Games - that's the way it is, right?"

Finally some wise words from A-Rod.

Kalugina only mentioned the men's team in her original post, but in the comments someone asked about the women and she didn't have much good to say. To her it seems that the burden of leadership has fallen upon Angelina Melnikova. Seda Tutkhalyan is somewhere up there with her, but Daria Spiridonova has not yet recovered from the Olympics. Natalia Kapitonova is in the middle of a growth spurt, and [her coach] Starkin is currently trying to figure out how to adjust her routines and technique accordingly. Elena Eremina has some very bad (but unspecified) health issues. In any case, she'll miss the first half of the season. This is a bit surprising, since we just saw Lena training as usual, and she also posted a picture of herself on her way to Kazan. We have no official word on any health issues, where did this come from??? I really don't know whether or not to believe Kalugina on this one, we will see on Wednesday. If it's true, it's going to be very bad news for the team this year.

The only ones still alive.

WOGA Classic 2017: It's still early in the season...

WOGA Classic was held last weekend and my two Baby Swans, Ksenia Klimenko and Angelina Simakova, did a decent job and managed to win several medals, Sima on every event. I'm very proud. Both also stayed on beam, a miracle basically. I'm even more proud.

But there are finally some videos, so let's take a look.

The Care and Keeping of Grips: Life at Round Lake

Lena posted a new vlog, this time she's showing us what a day at Round Lake is like. Surprisingly, there's actually conditioning. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of tape and no carbs.

The girls are working out in the smaller gym, this is the morning practice session with conditioning and strength training and no apparatus work. Lena is working on a layout full during their tumbling session on the springboard. It would be an amazing upgrade, but I'm not convinced that she has enough stamina to pull it off. She has a few years to work on it though, her camera is still in 2014.

You might notice that Melka is missing, so are both Masha's. Ulya makes a short appearance, but apparently still isn't training with the usual program. I wouldn't be too worried about Melka, maybe she's training in Voronezh. Kharenkova is injured and you never really know with Beefarm. She's supposed to compete at nationals, but she only returned to training a few months ago, so I don't see where's the rush. She's broken enough as it is without a hurried comeback.

Bonus: Watch the vlog carefully and you might catch a glimpse of Mihai Brestyan's Russian twin :P

Russian Championships 2017: Bye bye Penza

Russian Nationals is approaching fast and we have one huge change from the previous years, the competition will take place in Kazan instead of Penza. You might not think that this a monumental change, but unless they bring with them all of the posters from Penza, Baby Viktoria Komova pointing "a gun" at the contestants will be history. I don't know how I will survive that. That poster has been the backdrop of every Russian routine for half a decade and now it's gone. Russian national competitions just won't be the same without it.

I've been speculating the move to Kazan and naturally ignoring all realistic and logical reasons like money, logistics, training conditions... Because nothing in Russian gymnastics is "realistic" or "logical". My top two theories are both related to the Queen of Russian Gymnastics herself, My Tsaritsa Aliya, who has a Tatar father. For those unfamiliar with Russian geography, Kazan is the capital of The Republic of Tatarstan, a federal subject with a population of Tatar majority. So maybe the team administration hopes that by going to the land of Aliya's ancestors, they can summon some of her spirit and power into the current team. My other theory is about the 2013 Universiade. It was probably the most successful competition of the Rio quad for Team Russia, so maybe they think that Kazan brings good luck.

This will be a major adjustment, but I'm not completely hopeless about the move. Kazan does have some memorable moments. Mainly these pictures of the Queen when she was there the last time and had to be dragged out of a hospital bed to do press and win some medals.

Good times.

Baby Swan Graduates: Elizaveta Kochetkova

Liza is from Moscow and coached by E.P. Baidina and V.V. Gurov. Out of the four new seniors, she has had the most modest junior career. She was never in any major teams and competed internationally only in a few very small competitions, but is now training with the national team at Round Lake. She could make the reserve team and perhaps compete in some smaller meets, but she'd have to improve significantly to be a part of the main team.

To be honest, I never really paid much attention to her, but she finally managed to impress me at the Voronin Cup last December. She is a fairly good all arounder, but rather unsurprisingly for a Russian, best on uneven bars. She's tall and leggy and benefits from her naturally nice lines, but she also has good execution and quality of movement to back that up.

Happy New Year! - again

Happy New Year! Today is Chinese New Year and for me, a non-Chinese, that means binge watching the gymnasts of Team China celebrate. I will never get tired of it.

Join me and have fun!

There Will Be an Heir

It's the middle of the night and I just realized that it has been several days now since news broke out that My Tsaritsa is pregnant and I have completely failed to mention it in any way here. So let's mention it: She and her husband Aleksei are expecting their first child and it's official, her dad said she is due in July. They don't now if it's a boy or a girl, but I have this gut feeling that it's going to be a boy. Whether or not I'm right, this is a joyous occasion in Aliyastan, our Queen is gracing us with an heir. I'm pretty sure that Aliyastan's rule of succession is based on bitchface-offs, a sporting event where people compete on who can make it to the top of the podium with the weight of most gold medals around their neck and likability among the state's cat population instead of heredity, but how could Aliya's own child not win that throne? Please. Just think about it, Aliya's mentality and charisma, paired with Aleksei's conditioning. Wow.

Baby Swan Graduates: Ulyana Perebinosova

Ulya is originally from Kuznetsk, but she trains in Moscow and is coached by Marina Ulyankina, also the coach/former coach of gymnasts like Maria Paseka, Seda Tutkhalyan and Alla Sosnitskaya. She represents the Central Federal Okrug, even though neither Moscow nor Kuznetsk is a part of it, but the Russian teams rarely follow any logic anyway. She made a steady rise through the junior ranks and by 2016, she was expected to be one of the team's top senior all arounders in 2017. So naturally she disappeared completely and her status now is unknown. Before her untimely disappearance, she won gold together with her team at the Junior European Championships, and also took individual silver on bars and bronze on floor. At the Russian Nationals in 2016, she won gold on vault, silver on all around and beam, and bronze on bars.

She has many attributes in common with other Ulyankina's gymnasts and like them, she's not the typical Russian Swan. She isn't nearly as messy as them and she usually has nice, clean lines, but she doesn't have the elegance or finesse of some of her teammates, and hasn't shown much character yet. She's an all arounder with fairly equal ability on 3 pieces. She's best on bars, very promising on floor with nice dance and high, clean tumbling, and one of the few Russians with a DTY on vault, but it's still very inconsistent. Her beam is...ummm...special. Think of junior Maria Paseka.

this is me getting overly excited about a really small meet

The roster for WOGA Classic (on February 18th) was released and IT HAD RUSSIANS! Two and a half of them, to be exact. The two Baby Swans flying across the pond this time are Angelina Simakova and Ksenia Klimenko, who are both competing at the elite competition for juniors. The reason I got really excited is Klimenko, aka Ksyusha, who is currently my favorite Baby Swan. I've probably mentioned this about 100 times before, but she's gorgeous.

Just look at those lines.

Because of her young age (born in 2003), she hasn't competed internationally before, but it looks like that's about to change. Let's hope that someone in the audience appreciates true beauty and records and posts her routines on YouTube. So far it has been a pain to find quality footage of her.

Sima already has plenty of experience and plenty of typical Russian headcasing under her belt, but I'm really happy to see her too. She really underperformed at the Europeans, so hopefully she'll take this chance to really show what she can do. It's early in the season and she's a Russian junior, so probably not though...

The last half from my two and a half Russians is Irina Alexeeva. She's technically fully Russian, but since she has trained at WOGA since forever and is planning to switch nationalities, I'm only counting her as a half. She's the most advanced junior attending, so she's probably going to get quite a few gold medals.

Baby Swan Graduates: Anastasia Ilyankova

Nastia is from Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Siberia, and currently the only gymnast representing the region on the women's national team. Interestingly enough, Siberia produces a lot of men's national team members, but Nastia is the first woman in awhile. She is coached by S.V. Kiselev and N.V. Kiseleva. Nastia is a long time national team member with a lot of international experience to prove it. She has been on the Russian Gymnix team three times, and was part of their gold medal winning Junior European Team last year. When Melka turned senior last year, Nastia grabbed herself the newly free top junior spot, slightly edging out Elena Eremina for it. Her titles include 2016 Junior European Champion on uneven bars and balance beam, 2016 National Champion on all around, bars and floor, bronze medalist on vault. She also has a huge pile of assorted medals from competitions like Russian Hopes, EYOF, Gymnix, Voronin Cup etc.

I have very mixed feelings about Nastia, which is a pretty accurate description of her gymnastics. Mixed. She's just one of those gymnasts who seems to effortlessly switch between moments of true beauty and regular mediocrity, making me crazy in the process. She's also a confusing mix of a very typical Russian junior with nicely pointed fingers throughout an inconsistent performance, and someone who gets the job done, but doesn't care how. She has the basics of a gymnast with more than average finesse, plenty precision, elegant movement and nice lines, but the next moment she has knees and feet everywhere they shouldn't be and she stumbles through her routine like a rhino. Ugh. However, there's one exception: bars. She somehow manages to look only beautiful on bars, leaving her various form issues behind when she steps on that podium. I will never figure her out.

Baby Swan Graduates: Elena Eremina

Lena is a protegée of the one and only Tatiana Nabieva, and the most promising gymnast to come out of St. Petersburg since her. She is from the same gym and coached by the same coaches, Vera and Aleksander Kiryashov/a. She wasn't the most prominent junior of the team and was overshadowed of gymnasts like Melnikova and Simakova for most of her junior career, but she definitely made up for it during her last year as a senior, when she became the 2016 Junior European all around and team champion. She also won bronze on balance beam. Her other titles include 2015 EYOF team gold and vault bronze, and 2016 Russian National Championships balance beam gold, uneven bars and vault silver and all around bronze, and 2015 Nationals vault gold, balance beam silver and uneven bars bronze.

I took me quite some time to fall in love with Lena, but this year she definitely got me good. In good and bad, her gymnastics reminds me a lot of Tanya. They share a lot of the same skills and the same messy, but strangely fluent and occasionally even elegant execution. And while Lena's presence and character doesn't quite compare to Nabs (how could anything compare to her, really), she has that something, that makes me want to watch her.

Baby Swan Graduates: Class of 2017

It's time for the usually sad and only semi-relevant post-Olympic year, but we still have 4 new brave youngsters, (hopefully) ready to try to defy the odds of surviving Russian gymnastics. They have already proved to be extremely resilient (or lucky) by making it into senior level, so let's hope that they have a few good (dare I say, maybe even a tiny bit successful) years left.

You're probably already familiar with them, but here are the former Baby Swans who graduated into senior ranks at the start of this year: Elena Eremina, Anastasia Ilyankova, Ulyana Perebinosova and Elizaveta Kochetkova.

Don't they all look young and innocent? Enjoy it while it lasts. They'll soon make you crazy in one way or another, probably either by being a talented headcase, injured headcase or someone who can actually hit but is always injured.

This post is going to be divided into separate parts in case I get overly excited and poetic. Part 1 will be up soon, and it's going to focus on Lena.

Round Lake Update

There was a new interview with Valentina Rodionenko, published today, and it actually had a tiny bit of real insight instead of her usual ramblings.

First she discusses their outstanding success at the Olympics (okay...) with the interviewer and how she accurately predicted their good results (okay...). Then she goes all soft and mushy thanking everyone on the team about their hard work. This is the most human she has been since bursting into tears when she heard that the team could actually compete in Rio after the threat of a blanket ban. She also mentions that 2017 is a chance for the gymnasts to show their individual capabilities, but the goal of 2018 is clear, qualification for Tokyo. They're building the team with that in mind.

But then it gets more interesting.

The Most Glamorous of Them All

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Aliya Mustafina was selected as Glamour Russia's Sports(wo)man of the Year 2016 and managed to look positively glamorous in their photoshoot. Some anon once sent me a message stating that Aliya is like a phoenix, rising from the ashes time and again. I couldn't think of a better comparison (a cat with nine lives?) and that dress reminded me of it. It has ashes and flames for our phoenix. And the neckline reminds me of some old Soviet leotards. Considering that Russian gymnastics rose from those ashes, it's strangely fitting too.

"They say that in the gym, I'm a diva."

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope 2017 is going to treat you well and be a much better year than 2016, unless 2016 was great for you. In that case, HOW??? Tell me your secrets, I need to learn how to have a good year. Seriously, I haven't had one since I was a kid, and even those years were questionable.

The New Year is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, so naturally My Tsaritsa Aliya is at home celebrating it with her kitty, just like me. Only she's looking gorgeous and I'm here like a hag in my PJs without makeup with a glass of Russian wine in my hand. At least my cat is looking dapper as always to make up for it. He's also plying with the cork of the Prosecco I drank earlier, so he has more class than me in the wine department too. Aliya's cat is cute but ready for bed. Perhaps too much wine?

The Queen certainly has many reasons to celebrate tonight. In 2016 she made a successful comeback, became a European and Olympic Champion, got married and got a cat. It doesn't get much better than that.