Stuttgart World Cup 2018: doing team final the Romanian way

So... Russia competed at Stuttgart and promptly disqualified themselves out of the team final. They're testing my patience. Because they have no excuse. It was not a bad team. Viktoria Komova, Anastasia Ilyankova, Lilia Akhaimova, Maria Kharenkova and Viktoria Gorbatova. Almost all of them belong to the better half of athletes they have right now. How can you go to a meet with a team of this caliber and screw up so badly. How? HOW? I don't know if you noticed, but I'm a little bit mad right now. Yeah, the other teams had some Worlds level gymnasts, yeah, it's really early in the season, yeah, the Russians downgraded and are saving their strength for Nationals in order to hit the perfect combination of utter disaster and great potential they so value there. And to be honest, this competition had really strict scoring. But even with these things considered, it was pretty bad.

They started out on beam. I would say that was a bad sign, but beam is a bad for the Russians no matter what rotation so whatever. Vika performed a very shaky and easy routine for 11.850. She was the only one to break 11. Iliya managed an execution score of 4.7 without even falling. Lilia fell twice, but had a double arabian dismount and it's not like anyone expected her to be good on beam. And she still outscored poor Ilya. Masha looked just really out of shape. All of the sharpness she used to have on beam is gone, she wasn't even trying to get her rings and she dismounted with a simple layout. And even the layout had bad execution. I wouldn't be surprised if she was injured again and pulled out of Nationals.

Floor was better. Lilia wasn't as sharp as she normally is, but managed an acceptable performance with her usual (high) difficulty. She got a decent score too, 13.500. Gorbatova looked pretty nice. Masha was a lot better than on beam, but still looked like she was about to die at any moment.

Vault wasn't that bad either, Lilia is doing an admirable job keeping herself relevant and has a Rudi. World ticket right there, good job. Ilya and Gorbs both performed less-than-perfect FTYs.

Bars is where it all fell apart. Vika was a shadow of herself but even her shadow is better than at least 80% of other people, so I'm counting her routine as a hit. It was easy, but beautiful. Ilya looked beautiful, at first too. Then she had a timing error, took a million empty swings and finally jumped off. The music in the background of her routine was dreadful, so I want to forgive her. I would have been horrified too. She recovered and finished with a handstand lasting 4 seconds. Lilia is looking a lot like Aly Raisman on bars. Maybe it's all of the arabians she has been doing for the past year. Gorbs looked pretty when she wasn't falling, but she fell three times, so in the end she looked pretty for about 2 seconds.

They had a bad tactic too. The competition format was 5-4-3, but they only had only 3 gymnasts competing on two events, so they couldn't toss out a bad score. Then again, which score do you toss out when all of them are bad? So they finished behind Belgium, Japan, Germany and Switzerland, respectively, and didn't qualify for the final.

And now everyone can cleanse their souls of this mess by watching this piece of heaven.

You're welcome.

After the team didn't qualify for final, Angelina Melnikova is the only Russian standing with all around competition ahead of her tomorrow. My hopes aren't exactly up, but it's not like she can do worse than this lot. No pressure Melka, no pressure at all.

Stop smiling, you're not allowed to be happy after that.

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All of their routines can be found HERE.