After the disastrous team qualifications I was pretty optimistic about Angelina Melnikova's individual all around competition, because it's not like she could do worse. And I'm happy to say that she didn't challenge me on that, she didn't do worse. Her lowest score was actually "only" 11.776. And that is to say, while she didn't screw up like the rest of her team, her performance wasn't that great either.
Vault was great, no problems there.
Bars on the other hand had plenty of issues. Miraculously no fall on her jaeger, but lots and lots of falling out of pirouettes. It was bad. Remember her junior years and 2016 when bars was her best event? Such a long time ago.
Her only fall was on beam, and you probably guessed it, it was the layout again. Otherwise I thought her beam was pretty nice, like it always is when she's on. I liked the new front toss too. During the dismount we saw a major upgrade. Her double pike has to me been her most well executed skill, and I've been thinking that she probably could hit a piked full in. And now she has. It was off direction and really low and she had to take steps out of the mat à la Vika 2012, but she didn't fall. It was still terrifying and I think we should maybe go back to the glorious double pike for now.
I'm one of the few it seems that enjoyed her floor last year, even with its overdone moments. But this year I'm not a fan. It's just boring, I forgot it as quickly as I saw it and had to actually watch it several times before having any impression in my head about it. So not terrible, but really unmemorable. She got rid of the double arabian which was probably wise, it was inconsistent. But I'm still slightly sad because it was a very pretty skill on her and I thought it was getting a lot better towards the end of the season. Her second major upgrade of the day was upgrading her layout to full twisting double layout. For a Russian, this s a pass no-one could dream of during the last quad. Unheard of. So I want to be happy. But it was messy in the air and she couldn't really hit her floor last year. I know her double layout was consistent, but it was often low. So we'll see. The non-fall on the double pike full was close to comical, I think I would have preferred her just putting her hands down. It's not like those steps came up less in points and it really broke the routine. I feel the same about people falling on beam and hanging on under the beam like monkeys, struggling to get back on for 10 seconds. It's not a save, it's still a fall and really messy, ugly and unnecessary. And really far worse that what Melka did here. But hey, that's me. But back to Melka's floor routine, it was actually pretty good besides the "save" (that Gelya herself was very proud of) and the terrible switch ring half. No issues anywhere else, and the score was good too considering all those steps.
So she had two huge upgrades and some more minor changes. I know I was frustrated the entire last quad because of Russia's lack of upgrades, the only one upgrading consistently and coming up with original routines was Seda Tutkhalyan. So I have been very impressed about their change of attitude this quad. Now everyone seems to be upgrading every year and taking risks with their skills, trying out something outside of the usual Russian gymnast must-haves. Only Melka is the member of team team least in need of upgrades when it comes to her difficulty and she couldn't hit her old routines to save her life last year. I won't say she was inconsistent, because I think she was perfectly consistent all year. Consistently bad. She fell and fell and made a mistake after mistake in every competition. So it doesn't really, really make sense to upgrade now. Just hit your old routines or make changes to make them work. Downgrade a bit if that's what you need to get your confidence back.
Bars on the other hand had plenty of issues. Miraculously no fall on her jaeger, but lots and lots of falling out of pirouettes. It was bad. Remember her junior years and 2016 when bars was her best event? Such a long time ago.
Her only fall was on beam, and you probably guessed it, it was the layout again. Otherwise I thought her beam was pretty nice, like it always is when she's on. I liked the new front toss too. During the dismount we saw a major upgrade. Her double pike has to me been her most well executed skill, and I've been thinking that she probably could hit a piked full in. And now she has. It was off direction and really low and she had to take steps out of the mat à la Vika 2012, but she didn't fall. It was still terrifying and I think we should maybe go back to the glorious double pike for now.
I'm one of the few it seems that enjoyed her floor last year, even with its overdone moments. But this year I'm not a fan. It's just boring, I forgot it as quickly as I saw it and had to actually watch it several times before having any impression in my head about it. So not terrible, but really unmemorable. She got rid of the double arabian which was probably wise, it was inconsistent. But I'm still slightly sad because it was a very pretty skill on her and I thought it was getting a lot better towards the end of the season. Her second major upgrade of the day was upgrading her layout to full twisting double layout. For a Russian, this s a pass no-one could dream of during the last quad. Unheard of. So I want to be happy. But it was messy in the air and she couldn't really hit her floor last year. I know her double layout was consistent, but it was often low. So we'll see. The non-fall on the double pike full was close to comical, I think I would have preferred her just putting her hands down. It's not like those steps came up less in points and it really broke the routine. I feel the same about people falling on beam and hanging on under the beam like monkeys, struggling to get back on for 10 seconds. It's not a save, it's still a fall and really messy, ugly and unnecessary. And really far worse that what Melka did here. But hey, that's me. But back to Melka's floor routine, it was actually pretty good besides the "save" (that Gelya herself was very proud of) and the terrible switch ring half. No issues anywhere else, and the score was good too considering all those steps.
So she had two huge upgrades and some more minor changes. I know I was frustrated the entire last quad because of Russia's lack of upgrades, the only one upgrading consistently and coming up with original routines was Seda Tutkhalyan. So I have been very impressed about their change of attitude this quad. Now everyone seems to be upgrading every year and taking risks with their skills, trying out something outside of the usual Russian gymnast must-haves. Only Melka is the member of team team least in need of upgrades when it comes to her difficulty and she couldn't hit her old routines to save her life last year. I won't say she was inconsistent, because I think she was perfectly consistent all year. Consistently bad. She fell and fell and made a mistake after mistake in every competition. So it doesn't really, really make sense to upgrade now. Just hit your old routines or make changes to make them work. Downgrade a bit if that's what you need to get your confidence back.
I'm still interested to see her at Nationals. I want to see how the upgrades are holding up during a second performance and if she can keep up only falling once every 4 routines. Because that would be an improvement.
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