Jesolo 2018: Junior Event Finals Medal Fest

Today was the final day of Jesolo and it included all of the event finals, both senior and junior. Russia came out pretty victorious, in addition to gold in the all around, their juniors took 3 out of the 4 apparatus gold medals. This was mostly thanks to an incredible performance from Vladislava Urazova. Ksenia Klimenko won tied gold on her best event, bars. Their teammates Elena Gerasimova and Daria Belousova both made finals as well, but didn't medal.

Golden Girl

Here's a recap of the competition:

Balance Beam:

The juniors started out on beam. Lena performed another absolutely beautiful routine, only this time her one mistake happened to be a huge one, a fall. Great qualifications, bad finals again for her on beam. Lena, you need to hit when it counts and stop taking the Komova route before you turn senior, okay? Vlada went last and still looked perfectly calm and collected, her routine was even better than in qualifications. After a huge score of 13.967 (basically a 15 with this quad's weird beam scoring), she won, naturally. Her second gold after her all around victory. Golden Vlada.

Floor Exercise:

Ksyusha disappointingly pulled out of floor finals, but maybe it's for the better. This and not vaulting yesterday could mean that she's nursing a minor injury. Better be safe than sorry with a gem like her. Vlada barely had time to get the gold medal from beam awards ceremony off her neck before she was expected on floor and she continued to shine. Her presentation isn't on the level of her junior teammates, but otherwise her routine was gorgeous. She was clean and precise and showed poise on every skill. I think she has basically mastered Aliya's "I'm the HBIC here" no-nonsense attitude in competitions. She did step out of bounds twice, but even that couldn't stop golden Vlada from winning another gold medal.

Vault:

Vlada was back for another great performance. She first stuck a clean 1.5 and then finished with equally clean FTY with a tiny hop upwards. I think she could have stuck that too, had she just bent her knees a bit. Her relatively low difficulty didn't hamper her too much, she rounded out her medals for the day with a bronze.

Uneven Bars:

Ksyusha made the uneven bars final in the top 4 despite her fall in the qualifications and spent the final watching her competitors like a hawk. You could see her in the background of every routine before her. I kind of like this competitive attitude she's showing. She hit her own routine without error and tied for gold with Italy's Elisa Iorio. Dasha's routine had a few very minor mistakes and moments of hesitation, but she did well for herself.

I think Vlada has officially won me over today.