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| 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.
I was at school and only saw a few routines and as of now, there aren't many routines online either, so I can't really write much. As I said, Lena was the star of the day with 4 hit performances. She had some minor jitters and mistakes, but she actually performed her upgraded routines on every apparatus (no DLO on floor though) and looked much better than anybody else. I'm pretty sure that the first day scores carry over so she already has over a point lead for the AA title.
Seda Tutkhalyan was 2nd with a 54.198. The good news is that she didn't have a near-death experience on vault, but looking at her score, she wasn't back to good either, just decent. Her floor was as usual, bars downgraded and beam switched up to work with the new code. The layout was gone and she fell on the full, but it's not like we were expecting her to stay on. She has a new RO+BHS mount and a double wolf turn. She keeps falling on her wolf turn attempts on floor, so I'm not sure it's a good idea for her beam routine, but I guess we'll see.
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| I can't believe these two are team veterans now |
Natalia Kapitonova was 3rd with a 53.432, largely thanks to her UB score (14.400), second best of the day. I didn't see her, but according to others, she looked sluggish, visibly struggling with her growth spurt. It looks like she fell on beam, but the rest was as usual. Actually, falling on beam is usual too. I'm really curious to see her with my own eyes tomorrow, because this was quite a solid start despite her growth issues. Or maybe it just looked solid because other people looked sluggish too.
Lilia Akhaimova and Angelina Melnikova tied for a 4th place with a 53.332. It took 3 falls from Melka to sink this low, but she's basically the new "Aliya" (I know, I know, it pains me even to say it) she can fall as many times as she wants because she's still going to make every team. And it wasn't really that bad. On bars she fell on her jaeger, a recurrent issue, but she usually manages to hit it in competition anyway. On beam she did a messy grigoras, but stayed on. and then fell on her dismount, also a recurrent issue. Usually she has the most beautiful double pike there is, but she also keeps having these weird mistakes with it. She had a new floor routine as expected (it would have been embarrassing to have the same routine for a third year in the row), and added a double arabian to fill the new forward tumbling requirement. She put her hands down on her last pass, but Russians and endurance is another recurrent issue... Nothing new there. Her floor score looks really, really high , but overscoring on floor at Russian national meets is basically a rule at this point.
I didn't see anything from Lilia, but apparently she's improving fast. If she looks good tomorrow, I may have to grudgingly accept her as a legitimate NT member. Bars is her achilles heel, but the Russians have plenty of other gymnasts to make up for it.
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| Excellent Newbies <3 |
Of course we can't forget the true star of the day, the true star of any day, Queen Aliya.
She did better than any of the people actually competing just by showing up. Thank you My Tsaritsa.
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Full results are HERE.
More pictures HERE and HERE.
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