Tuesday 21 February 2017

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.

Sima, who will be a senior next year, admirably medaled on every single event, and took home the main prize, all around gold with a 53.650. They used the new CoP, so you can comfortably add 2 points to that score to get closer to what she would have scored with the last code, if it seems a bit low to you. In addition to gold on AA, she won gold on balance beam and floor, silver on bars and bronze on vault. She's really lacking difficulty compared to Klimenko, but consistency won today (as nearly always).

Her vault was solid, but only a FTY this time. There wasn't a video of her bars, but she scored well for herself, so she must have had a good routine. Her routine is pretty easy, but I'm telling you, HANDSTANDS. She had a good day on beam too, but I'm not a huge fan of hers here. She definitely good, but just not that special? I don't know. Maybe she'll grow on me.


Her floor wasn't on YouTube, but you can watch it here. She was really struggling with her tumbling, but (for what feels like the 100th time), it's early in the season. This is her old routine and I have seen her perform it better, but it wasn't bad. It's just that she's really good when she's on, and this time she wasn't.

Ksyusha won bronze on AA (51.300) and uneven bars, and silver on beam. She had a pretty bad competition, but you know what, that's a good medal haul for a bad competition. She had her worst performance of he day on vault, it was really scary. She came really low onto the table and didn't get a block, which nearly resulted in landing on her head. She somehow managed to land on her hands and knees, but scary... Her UB routine was a complete mess, but it's still new to her and at least the dismount was gorgeous.


Balance beam is her best apparatus, but she was unfortunately a bit hasty and shaky. I love her connections, free aerial to LOSO (a bit weird looking though) and FHS to front tuck. And her jumps are to die for. Gorgeous. The dismount was super low, but who cares when you have that sheep jump to stare at on repeat. I just noticed that her difficulty is already at 5.6 (new code again), pretty good for her age, but she got hammered in execution (obviously the judges cared about the dismount more than me). Silver anyway.


She managed to look beautiful on floor, mistakes aside. Her form on tumbling is gorgeous, jumps and leaps beautiful, choreography lazy, but she makes what little she has look amazing. I love her. BTW, she does have 4 tumbling passes, but the first one is cut out.


I'm a bit worried about her power and stamina though. Yeah, it's early in the season, but she's very low on pretty much everything. She grew a lot last year, so maybe the growth spurt is taking its toll? It could be that her muscles haven't caught up with her height yet. I just really need her to make it to senior, she's the most beautiful Russian gymnast since Grishy.

Irina Alexeeva didn't compete. Lv Jiaqi did and was still beautiful, maybe there's still some hope for her. Even though she was as inconsistent as ever.
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You can find the full results HERE.
And more videos HERE.

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