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.
Speaking of Russia's number 1 hope, Melka... She competed at the London World Cup last weekend and I didn't even make a post about it, because it was that terrible. She didn't hit one routine. She "only" fell on beam and floor, but her vault and bars were pretty bad too, even if she didn't really count a fall on them. Go watch it on YouTube, if you're brave enough. She has been competing all around three weekends straight (Stuttgart, Jesolo, London) and had only two weeks off after the nationals and I feel bad for her. She's not a college gymnast and should get more time to recover, especially since Euros, the second most important competition of the year, is going to be in another two weeks and it would be good if she was feeling somewhat fresh for it. I still wish that she would hit every now and then though. She's either going to be terrible and bomb completely and possibly even semi-destroy her career, or do some kind of Aliya magic and have a great competition after looking like shit for months. I'm so scared for her. Actually, scratch the career-destroying part, Russia will forever take a gymnast of her caliber because it's not like they cannot.
In another news, we found out from Vera Kiryashova that Seda injured her ankle during training and has been out because of that. She's still training at Round Lake, but can't really vault or tumble.
And Viktoria Komova is hard at work back home in Voronezh. Look at her
Have you any idea if there will be a live stream??
ReplyDeleteEurovision Sports is probably streaming: www.eurovisionsports.tv/ueg/
DeleteAlso, if you live in Europe, you might want to check your own country's tv channels, one of them has probably bought the rights for Euros. If not, the Brits and Dutch usually have good streams that you can watch if you get past the block.