Russian Championships 2018: The Queen Is Back

The Russian Championships began with the team competition today and I knew we weren't going to get the repeat disaster of last year, because the class is back. The one and only Aliya Mustafina made her return in her usual way, surprising everyone. No simple layouts, no timers, she had real skills and real routines, less than a year after giving birth. I don't know how, but I never know how when it comes to My Tsaritsa. Because there's no way she would return and not be The Champion again right away, the Moscow team won gold. My Queen is on the top of the podium again. The second team was Central, and third Moscow's second team. Because they aren't lucky enough with their athletes for just one team.

The official livestream doesn't start until tomorrow, so my recap of the day is based on instagram and periscope videos and results.

Angelina Melnikova didn't break my heart and instead hit 4-for-4. I'm probably happier for this than Aliya hitting. I couldn't take Melka returning to the her sorry state of last year. She finished with an amazing 57.732, made every final in first place and has a two point lead going into the all round final tomorrow. It took Aliya returning for Melka to shout out to the world that "hey, I CAN be the Chosen One, watch me". I feel sorry for her though, because she just returned from Italy, where she competed all round for two days in a row, and now has to do it three times. I hope they pull her out of the finals, there's no point in breaking her over Nationals.

Angelina Simakova just got back from a good performance at the Tokyo World Cup and is standing in second place before tomorrow's all around final. Her only bad score was on beam, it even that wasn't too bad. It's a great start from her and she was unsurprisingly the best one of my Baby Swan Graduates today.

I already said that Aliya's routines were better than expected of her at this point, but she somehow managed to lose a tie breaker for Sima over the second place in the all round and finished third instead. I guess her tie breaking abilities are not quite what they used to be yet. She had a DTY, her former bars routine without inbars and a pak+shap 1/2 connection, slightly hesitant beam with an easy to miss acrobatic series, and her 2014 floor routine with a double arabian, 1.5+1/1 (good twisting form!) and a double tuck. No words.

Viktoria Komova looked like her usual beautiful self on everything. Her DTY was slightly piked, her bars were gorgeous but without inbars, her beam was quite steady and again, beautiful except for a fall on her arabian, and her floor was nice as well, but she stumbled on a memmel and put her hands down on a double tuck. This was pretty much what I expected from her, but I still love seeing her back in competition. The beauty of her gymnastics makes every competition ten times better.

Anastasia Ilyankova made a mistake on bars but still had a pretty good competition based on her scores. Ulyana Perebinosova had a bad beam routine, but it's not like that wasn't expected. Viktoria Gorbatova also seemed to struggle on beam, but got decent scores on everything else. Lilia Akhaimova had injured her ankle before Jesolo and only did bars today. Maria Kharenkova didn't do all around either, only beam and floor, both scores pretty low for her.

Irina Alexeeva finally made her return to Russia (I thought she said she was going to compete for the USA?) and didn't embarrass herself nor the National Team. She struggled on beam, but had a decent day otherwise and is currently 7th all around, 4 points behind Melka and less than two points behind Aliya and Sima. She was really promising a few years ago when she won The Secret US Classic, but seems to have stagnated since. Back then she outshined the Russian junior team, but now she seems to be heading for the B-team.

Before the competition I was worried about Seda Tutkhalyan, and I'm sad to say that I'm still worried. She competed vault, bars and beam for Moscow's second team and based on the scores, it doesn't look good. Vault was fine, but her bars only scores 9.500 and beam was 11.000. She might be really done.

That was it for the first day. Tune in tomorrow for the all around final at 15:10 Kazan time for the official livestream at sportgymrus.ru/live.
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The full results are HERE.
More pictures HERE.