Russian Championships 2018: The Mighty Melka at the Event Finals

The Russian Championships concluded with 3 more gold medals and a silver for Angelina Melnikova. If this is going to be the peak performance of her career, I will be mad. She could have gotten Worlds medals for these performances, but no, she had to hit almost everything at Russian Nationals instead. I'm not mad that she hit, I'm still really happy, I just wish that she could stay in this zone when it really matters. Maybe she will in the future, even if Simone Biles is going to come back and make everyone else nearly irrelevant. Aliya Mustafina finally managed to run out of stamina and finished without medals. Except for her team gold of course. She had to have that one gold so that the competition was worth showing up to.

VAULT: 1. Viktoria Trykina 2. Angelina Melnikova 3. Tatiana Nabieva

The gold medal on vault went perhaps a bit surprisingly to Viktoria Trykina, whose DTY was piked and a bit underrotated, but actually didn't look unsafe. So yay? Her Lopez had some form issues, but was pretty good. Melka's several competitions in such a short time must have been weighing on her, because she did some of the worst vaults we've seen from her in awhile. Her DTY was a mess in the air with a nice landing, and she kind of missed the block on her Lopez. Tatiana Nabieva made her biannual pilgrimage out of retirement and hit a nice DTY. It's better than most of the National Team's. Actually, half the National Team doesn't even have a DTY, so Nabs is the king. I'm not sure if her Lopez was supposed to be piked or laid out, but it got her the bronze medal. Eleronora Afanasyeva's DTY had no distance whatsoever, but she made the twists. Angelina Simakova's Rudi was heavily piked and she took a big step to the side. Seda Tutkhalyan still doesn't have her DTY back.

UNEVEN BARS: 1. Angelina Melnikova 2. Irina Alexeeva 3. Viktoria Komova

Gold medalist Melka managed to still upgrade during the second final day of the competition and connected her pak and shap 1/2 like a true Rio-quad graduate. Her first pirouette was really late as it sometimes is, but otherwise it was a great routine for her. Maybe this means that she's really, really done with tripping over her own arms, I guess having her arm iced before Jesolo finally made her see the light. Irina Alexeeva hit a great routine with her usual form issues for a silver medal, her first in Russia. Viktoria Komova hit what I thought was a pretty good routine (the bars had a lousy camera angle), but the judges absolutely hammered her. Maybe I missed something? Only bronze for her. Anastasia Ilyankova took herself out of the medals with another botched Ezhova, and an uncharacteristic fall on her dismount. She looked pissed at herself. Ulyana Perebinosova just had another meltdown. The Queen of the Uneven Bars Aliya looked great until a minor issue with the jaeger, after which she lost her rhythm and ran out of stamina landing her dismount on her knees. She looked just as pissed as Ilya, but it's fine, her stamina is 100% better than I ever thought it could be at this point of her comeback.

BALANCE BEAM: 1. Angelina Melnikova 2. Ksenia Kamkova 3. Polina Fedorova

Melka won another gold with a routine that was a bit shaky, but still determined. The dismount was the best she's done.  Ksenia Kamkova hit a very Russian routine that was in parts beautiful and in parts a complete mess. It included two wolf turns. Polina Fedorova's routine was quite steady, but easy. Maria Kharenkova looked a lot sharper than she did in Stuttgart, but fell and still has just a layout as a dismount. Daria Elizarova looked gorgeous in a black leo and looked great on beam as well, but lost a lot of her connections to small balance checks and was judged harsh as well. Aliya put her hands down after her onodi and was short on the dismount, but was pretty much dead on on everything else. She managed to lose another tie-break, this time for the bronze medal. Hopefully her magical luck in just in rust and will come back. Vika was shaky, but fought for everything.

FLOOR EXERCISE: 1. Angelina Melnikova 2. Angelina Simakova 3. Irina Alexeeva

Melka deservedly won the gold medal over a point ahead of Sima. Her routine still had some slighly sketchy landings, but no big problems. Sima (with some fierce blue eyeshadow) was clean as usual, but Melka's difficulty won. Ira stumbled a lot on both her tumbling and dance elements, but she managed to clinch the bronze from Elizarova. Viktoria Gorbatova looked absolutely beautiful, but didn't have the difficulty to contend. Kamkova was beautiful as well, but fell on her last pass.