As I said, Ulya won the all around (53.298), but looked still quite out of shape and exhausted, like a true Russian. I could have sworn this was the podium training of some actually important competition based on her appearance. Her routines were downgraded, though it's nothing unusual in February. She only vaulted a FTY which was high and messy. On bars things got interesting with a crashed attempt at a tweddle. She continued her routine straight from the low bar so I'm guessing she was trying to connect the Tweddle to an Ezhova à la the actual Tweddle? What a routine, if she ever hits it. Otherwise I thought her bars looked messier than usual. She's not the cleanest of gymnasts, but she has shown that she's capable of hitting a clean routine so I wish she would. She looked defeated too. Look at the way she looks at Ulyankina after her fall, it's like she's shrugging her shoulders not caring and saying 'told you I was never going to hit it'. We only saw half of her beam routine but it looked like much less of a struggle than usual and had some nice moments with the connections. The dismount was high and looked too easy for her, time to upgrade. On floor she looked pretty good, slightly sluggish but much like her usual self. Her tumbling was downgraded, but high and clean like always. Hopefully she can upgrade by nationals.
Here's Yulia Sushkoa, Ulya's alter ego, performing in Reykjavik.
As I said, the field was pretty weak (only gymnasts from Iceland and Sweden) so she won gold on beam, floor and vault, and silver on bars despite the fall. The only thing that actually kept her form sweeping the podium was bars, usually her best apparatus. I love irony.
Nelli did just as well as Ulya, winning vault, uneven bars and floor exercise gold in addition to all around (49.799), and balance beam silver. She's still young unlike poor 16-year-old Ulya, so she managed to even look alive. And I love black leotards so much that I have to love her just for wearing that leo. I can't unfortunately find her performances in Reykjavik on anything else than floor, but her 'typical Russian junior floor routine' was enjoyable enough. I think that most of you will hate the L-turn, but to me with the hands touching her head and the traditional dance influences from the rest of the routine it fit in very well and felt cheeky. I liked it. I can just imagine Baby Viktoria Komova with all of her natural charm doing it and looking fabulous. Nelli isn't Vika and didn't pull it off as well as Vika could have, but it was fine to me. The highlight of her routine was obviously the Mustafina and it was impressive indeed, but very messy, just like the rest of her most difficult skills.
Nelly has really impressive skills for her age, but so far I haven't really fallen in love with her. She needs to clean up her basics first and work on perfecting everything else before chucking a bunch of difficult skills just because she can. Of course Russian juniors usually struggle with difficulty during their final years before turning senior, so we'll see if doing it this way will work out better once Nelli is a senior. Maybe she'll be able to both refine her skills and have insane upgrades at the same time and be the next Russian all around champion.
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Notes:
Full results are here.
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EDIT
I thought I had a faint memory of Ulya doing the Tweddle before but ignored it, because I thought if she did something like that the memory would certainly be clear. But I now regret ignoring it, because here it was.
Hit like it was nothing. And she looks miles better here anyway.
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