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.

Seda Tutkhalyan won gold on vault with two solid vaults. I'm starting to think that she'll never get her 2014-2015 DTY back, but at least it wasn't scary. She also wore one of the most iconic (at least to me) Russian leos and killer makeup to go with it, so a good day for her. On vault... But we'll get to bars later.

Lilia Akhaimova came in second with a good Yurchenko 3/2 and FHS 3/2 (if I remember correctly). Angelina Melnikova decided to get out of her rut in the vault final, of all places, and came in third with a messy and piked DTY paired with even messier and more piked lopez that she landed stiff-legged and went out of bounds. Now that she has two vaults, Seda's chance of going to Euros is getting a lot slimmer. Alla Sosnitskaya and Anastasia Dmitrieva both had a nice lopez, but Alla crashed her DTY and Nastia only had a FTY, so they didn't quite make it to the podium.

Vault Final: 1. Seda Tutkhalyan 2. Lilia Akhaimova 3. Angelina Melnikova

So vault was good, but uneven bars final was actually impressive. So much so, that I almost forgot everything we saw during qualification and all around. Everyone but Seda hit and we even saw some performances worthy of international medals. Natalia Kapitonova won, but didn't really win with a beautiful routine. Her growth spurt really did her a favor on bars, she's even more elegant than earlier. She seemed to effortlessly fly through her routine with amazing form, perfect toepoint and no visible errors until the very end, when she had a slight break during that awkward front giant (just get her a real reverse skill already). I'm seriously starting to like her.

I said that she won, because at first it looked like she did, but then Daria Spiridonova's score magically went up so they tied for the gold. Dasha's routine was beautiful too, the first time she has looked good since the Olympic qualification. She took out her inbar 1/2, but at least the execution was great. I have no idea what happened with the score, they did the same thing during Russian Cup last year, bumped her score up to tie with the winner. Conspiracy?

Daria Skrypnik won bronze, but we didn't get to see her routine, because of some mediocre performance on rings. Anastasia Ilyankova was 4th, but we only got to see the end of her routine, because of a bad performance on rings. Lovely. The end looked good. And more good news: Elena Eremina was also giving us her best. To me, this was by far the best UB routine she has done ever since she upgraded late last year. The nabs was good, pak was much better than normally, jaeger the best we're seen, she took out the inbar 1/2, but her form was very much improved and the dismount was great. The jaeger still needs some work and she could do without a few extra giants, but I was quite happy with her routine. We didn't see what happened with Seda, apparently she fell at some point, but at least she hit the dismount this time. Daria Elizarova did great.

Uneven Bars Final: 1. Natalia Kapitonova 1. Daria Spiridonova 3. Daria Skrypnik

By the way, this was the only picture with all three of them. The rest had only Spiridoz and Kapi. Poor Skrypnik.

As I said, I'm quite happy with this day. After the past few days, it was refreshing to see some quality gymnastics. The future doesn't look so bleak anymore. Let's hope that tomorrow won't ruin my good mood.

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Full results are HERE.

More videos HERE.