The Best and Worst of 2017: The Gymnasts

I decided to reward the team with my own personal awards honorable mentions for the past year. Some are good, some not, but that's the Russian way. Here's everyone who made my list.

The Champion of the Year: Aliya Mustafina

What can I say? She's pretty much the Champion of every year and she didn't even have to compete to win. No, she just gestated and pushed out an entire baby and returned to training only after a few months. Because she's the Queen.

"But I thought it [coming back to gymnastics after giving birth] would be way harder." -Aliya Mustafina

The Runner-up for Champion of the Year: Baby Alisa

Our Princess, Tsarevna, the Heir Apparent, all praise her. She's an obvious Champion just for being born royal. She has the pedigree and the bitchface, what else could you hope for in a baby?

"Blurggarblugughoo" -Baby Alisa (probably)

The Most Valuable Player of the Year: Elena Eremina

Aliya was busy creating life, Melka was busy being a mess, who was left to carry the team on her tiny shoulders of a recently turned senior? Lena! The Russian team was behaving as Russian as they could, falling apart everywhere, but our new senior rose to the occasion and gave us her best all year winning medal after medal. It has been a long time since a first year Russian senior transitioned this well into senior competition and I'm so proud. She's talented, she's beautiful, she has a nabieva and she's not impressed with silver or bronze.

"I’m very happy with my first medal at the senior World Championships, but, at the same time, I’m feeling slightly disappointed because I could have become the champion." - Elena Eremina

The Most Unfortunately "Russian" Russian of the Year: Angelina Melnikova

At the beginning of the year she had it all. Aliya was away and the team was in need of a new leader and number one all arounder, and everyone was looking straight at Melka. She had the skills and the experience, what could go wrong? A lot could go wrong. She seemed to go from bad to worse to tiny bit better to a disaster, confusing gymfans with one disastrous performance after another. Even she wasn't quite sure what was wrong. One of the absolute highlights of the year was her amazing gold winning floor routine at the Europeans, a routine, that just happened to be the best scoring floor routine anyone in her team had produced in years. But such a win for a Russian could only result in a heartbreak after.

"I apologize to everyone... I don't know what is happening." -Angelina Melnikova

The Viktoria Komova of the Year: Viktoria Komova

She's injured, she's not, she's retired, she's not, she's back, but maybe not... Only Viktoria Komova can play with our hearts the way she does. After a long year of training and slowly getting back, she finished the year by actually competing at the Voronin Cup. And it was glorious.

"Viktoria Komova and a big trophy is my aesthetic." - me

The Most Forgettable of the Year: Seda Tutkhalyan

Who?

The Most Underwhelming Russian of the Year: Natalia Kapitonova

She started out the year extremely strong and shined at the Nationals when everyone else was a mess. She even had one of the best UB sets in the World. She was quickly promoted to the A-team and made some international assignments including her biggest competition yet, the European Championships. There she returned to her old mediocre ways and unfortunately also found herself returning to the safe anonymity of the B-team for the rest of the year. Bye Kapi, it was good while it lasted.

The Baby Swan of the Year: Ksenia Klimenko

No point in asking if I've already told you how much I love her because I'm sure I have. Repeatedly. I've completely exhausted the word gorgeous and blabbered on about lines, elegance and grace. She's that good.

The Most in Need of a Stay in Munich of the Year: Anastasia Ilyankova

Her UB routine is a dream but her back is chronically bad. Does this sounds like anyone else we know? Half of the Russian team, maybe. She isn't a Munich Munchkin yet, but she definitely is one in the making. If she survives until then.

The Broken Back of the Year: Maria Paseka

Yeah, poor Vika just missed out on this one :( Masha won because she's such a pro for winning both the World Championships on vault and new spare parts for her back all in one year. 

"Ouch." -Maria Paseka's back (probably)

The "Look How the Mighty Have Fallen" of the Year: Daria Spiridonova

Once a World Champion, now can't put one quality routine together in an entire year. A Russian mystery, I guess.

"Sometimes nothing is going right." -Daria Spiridonova

And yet, I still love them all so much. An honorable mention for me for that. 

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Notes: The X-rays are not actually Beefarm's, but apparently she had the same operation as pictured.

And look at that picture of Alisa. It gives me the old-school vibes of Aliya. It's all "Look at my big teary eyes. I might start crying at any moment, but I will also kill you if you point it out to me."