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.

She has been pushed to be an all around gymnast as is usual in Russia, but she clearly excels on bars above all else. To be honest, I'm expecting her to eventually become a kind-of-but-not-really- specialist like Spiridoz (who still keeps doing all around but only as an afterthought). On junior level, she was a successful all arounder and it looks like they are sticking with it. Like Lena, she has kept upgrading last year, so she could perhaps actually survive the senior transition. We'll see. She definitely has promise. And this is just my gut instinct, with absolutely no basis in reality, but I see determination in her, and ambition. She wants to be the best. And while she certainly can be inconsistent, she's actually pretty tough. Very tough for a Russian junior.

As a nice, but irrelevant plus, Nastia usually wears a wide variety of leos instead of getting stuck on the national team staples.

VAULT:

She has a consistent FTY with very nice form throughout, slightly bent knees in the air, because she has to always make me a little bit frustrated. Almost perfect, but not quite. She randomly upgraded to  Yurchenko 1.5 at Euros, but it didn't work out.

UNEVEN BARS:

I absolutely love her on bars, definitely one on my favorites in the entire team. She's a very non-typical Russian here, in a good way. She uses free hip circles instead of stalders on her pirouettes and transitions, which is just a nice and very Khorkinaesque change to the norm, but where it gets wild, is her releases. Her tkachev and hindorff are just dreamy and sky high, we're talking about Gabby Douglas levels here. She even has the Gabo problem of being so high that she lacks in longitude, another one of those almost perfect but not quite frustrating things about Nastia. She also lacks a jaeger and added an ezhova as her forward element last year. Another recent upgrade, shaposh 1/2, naturally. She is beautiful and has impeccable form throughout her bars routine, legs practically glued together, admirable handstands and none of her usual mediocrity in between.  While her routine is original, it doesn't quite get the top scores. They have been slowly switching her routine to the usual cookie-cutter format during the latter part of the year, she even now has a pak+maloney. I'm interested to see what will remain of her old routine this year.

The first routine is her old one, the second one is the "Russianized" version with upgrades.

BALANCE BEAM:

Balance beam is definitely a bit of a struggle. In the rare occasion that she's on, she has precision and poise, even if it's mixed with a terrible layout and some serious knee issues. And when she's shaky, she's just really shaky with messy everything. Her jumps and leaps are also a bit lacking. This routine is probably her best and shows how good she can be when she's on. Even her knees and layout are the best they've ever been.

FLOOR EXERCISE:

I don't really like her much on floor. It's not that she's bad, she just isn't that good either. Just average. She does the choreography she's given very well and has some charm, but I get the feeling that she's not the most natural dancer or performer. She's definitely not bad either and I don't think she really lacks movement, she just tends to "go through the motions", with precision. See, I can't even explain to myself why I don't like her floor. I'm just going to shut up and let you decide. Her tumbling is easy, execution average and leaps inconsistent. This routine was still very new to her, I think she'll perform it better next year.

While trying to choose a floor routine, I actually stumbled upon this dance through. It's beautiful and I love it. Such a generic Russian junior routine, but she does it really, really well. Maybe it's gymnastics that messes her up. Or competition pressure? Strange. Just compare it to the same routine a year later at competition, it's like she's a different gymnast. I remain confused and conflicted.