Russian Cup 2018: All Around Final

I know I'm bad, trust me, but I wasn't going to miss the Russian Cup. So even though I'm a bit late, I'm here with a recap of the all around.

The Russian Cup took place in Chelyabinsk this year, and the arena actually looked like an ice rink based on its shape.That reminded me of this dream I once had. I'm happy to say that the competition didn't turn out like in my dream. Not that I would have been surprised if it did, this is the Russian Cup.

The Russian team has been riddled with injuries as usual, and the most notable missing gymnast today was Aliya Mustafina. She's had problems with her knee ever since Nationals. Elena Eremina and Maria Paseka have both returned to training after their back injuries, but are not yet fit to compete, and probably won't be for awhile. Irina Alexeeva, who just made her return to Russia and has been licensed to compete internationally by FIG, is out with an ankle injury.

The scores from the qualifying competition and team final carried over and coming into the final, heavily taped Angelina Melnikova was less than a tenth ahead of Anastasia Ilyankova for the gold medal. Angelina Simakova was comfortably third only a point behind and I would have actually been very happy with this podium. Viktoria Komova came to the all around in fourth place and the always surprising Tatiana Nabieva was fifth. The last gymnast in the top group was another veteran, Daria Elizarova, after Lilia Akhaimova pulled out of the final due to some nagging injuries.

Bad News

The Russian Team has suffered another injury, and this time it's to their Queen, Aliya Mustafina. She has withdrawn from Osijek World Cup due to a knee injury. The injury on her meniscus is supposed to be a minor one, so probably not a tear. It's still alarming considering her history with knee injuries. The last time she was out for something other than back pain was in late 2015, when she tore the meniscus on her right knee and had a surgery. And of course we all remember her famous ACL tear in 2011. She's supposed to be back to training by the end of May, but I can't help but think that she's been back for 2 seconds and her body is already showing the wear and tear. It's almost like we're picking up right where we left off.

I wish the Queen a speedy recovery.

And just in case you've forgotten how many other injuries the team has accumulated during the past few months: Elena Eremina, Lilia Akhaimova and Aleksandra Schekoldina. Angelina Melnikova apparently has some minor knee injury too.

The Queen Is Single Again

It's not like Aliyastan ever even had room for a king with such a supreme ruler already in place, but now our Queen is without an official consort. Aliya Mustafina just announced in instagram, that she got divorced last month. According to her, her ex-husband Alexei Zaytsev just wasn't right for her, but she's grateful for their daughter Alisa whom she loves very much.

So the rumors about their separation were true. This is obviously very sad news, but it's just so... Aliya. I'm going to repeat what I wrote when I first heard of the rumors. She lives the life she wants the way she wants without apologies and that's a skill I sometimes (alright, often) wish I had.

I wish the best for her and her family, Alisa in particular. She seems like a happy baby and may she remain so.

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.

Russian Championships 2018: All Around Final

Russian Championships continued with the all around final yesterday and I luckily had the time to watch the competition live, but had to go to work straight after, so this post is a day late. And I'm spending the beginning of a the long and boring night shift writing this post. The Russians surprisingly continued to not suck and pretty much everyone in the first group had a decent competition. By decent I mean that not the kind of disaster we usually expect from Nationals and no one had a meltdown. Queen Aliya Mustafina proved that she was truly back by competing her second all around in to days. I need a montage of her gymnastics made to Sia's Greatest, because Aliya is obviously the greatest and I have no idea how she has managed to gain the stamina for this in just a few months. She unfortunately finished fourth by a tenth of a point because Russia suddenly has depth before the injury season really kicks in, but who cares. She's still undeniably the greatest.

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.

Round Lake Update

Spring is here! It's still occasionally snowing where I live, but whatever. I hate spring so I don't know why I'm excited, but for some reason I'm just ready to leave winter behind for awhile at least.

There hasn't been much going on in the world of Russian gymnastics during the past few weeks, but the next ones should be very busy. A team of Ulyana Perebinosova, Eleonora Afanasyeva, Anastasia Ilyankova, Angelina Melnikova, Daria Belousova, Elena Gerasimova, Vladislava Urazova and Ksenia Klimenko is already in Italy for Trofeo Citta' di Jesolo and Nationals will be held right after they return. We also heard that Aliya Mustafina should compete at the Osijek World Cup at the end of May. All hail the Queen. Both Aliya and Valetina Rodionenko have agreed that she's motivated and in a competitive mindset.

The federation released some promotional training footage and interviews for Nationals, nothing terribly interesting.

Round Lake Update: Rumor has it

This is all from my wild and speculative tumblr dash, the sources range from the gymnasts' instagrams to pure fan speculation, so don't take anything too seriously. But let's go over some recent rumors. The topics include injuries, returns and the Queen's marriage.

The one and only Ksenia Afanasyeva is back at Round Lake. The source is Angelina Melnikova, so I'm pretty sure this is true, but to what extent? Is she BACK back, or just visiting for fun? I have a hard time believing that she's fully training, which she needs to be if she's at Round Lake. I don't have a hard time thinking that she's training, but usually gymnasts come back from injuries (and retirement) by training at home and after awhile and only when they're super serious, they go back to Round Lake for evaluation and begin training there if they're far enough in their recovery. Even the veterans like Afan do it like this. Aliya did it like this and Afan has done it several times in the past. If she's back, she has been super sneaky about it. There's of course the complication that Afan's coach is a part of the staff and has a personal gymnast at Round Lake, so she could be forced to return early. I don't know. But I'm excited.

New and Old Rules at the Gala

Aliya Mustafina, Angelina Melnikova and Daria Skrypnik performed at a gymnastics gala in France over the weekend. Apparently no one was interested in seeing poor Melka and Dasha, but we have a Periscope recording (with a quality of an old potato) of Aliya, because the Queen is not to be ignored.

I feel like screen recording another screen recording in order to post the routines here would be a bit too much, so I'm just posting the links this time. Here is her bars routine to New Rules by Dua Lipa and her beam routine, unfortunately without a sound.

We obviously have new rules on bars, because there's choreography! And old ones on beam, still no acro series. And I know the routines are just for exhibition purposes at a gala, but still. I'm actually really impressed about that bars routine. Her stamina is not there, which is expected at this point, but she still managed some good handstands and a dismount. The first half of the beam routine was pretty terrible, but she eventually seemed to get the hang of it. And she had a new element, a split ring jump.

The only footage I found of Melka is this one, but it's shot from far away. She fell on the layout, because she always falls on the layout (GET RID OF IT ALREADY), but the rest of the routine actually looks pretty good.

If someone has better footage, or anything from Dasha and Melka, let me know.

Throwback Thursday: Brighter than Gold

Just a teeny, tiny throwback to last summer and the European Youth Olympic Festival where my Baby Swan favorite Ksenia Klimenko competed like the champion she is. She won the all around and got gold on balance beam and floor exercise too, but finished second on bars, her best apparatus.

Buuuuuut... Look at her.

We can clearly see that Ksyusha is still the brightest star on that uneven bars podium. The brightest star with the brightest medal.

I can't even tell you why I love this picture so much. Maybe it's because the way this picture ended up is the kind of shit that only happens to Queen Aliya. So maybe it's a sign for great things to come for Ksyusha.

Round Lake Update: upgrades and injuries on beam

Russian Gymnastics Federation posted some training footage of the gymnasts on their instagram account. Most of it was obviously about their biggest start Aliya Mustafina, but we saw glimpses of Maria Kharenkova, Elena Eremina and Anastasia Ilyankova too. We even saw a few skills form Aliya and Masha, but the rest was only choreography and warm-ups.

Бревно - самый коварный вид женского гимнастического многоборья!🤸🏼‍♀️ ▫️▫️▫️ Уделим ему особое внимание☝🏻😈 вместе с @musaliya135 @heleneremina @nastyailyankova @hariys98 ▫️▫️▫️ Enjoy❤️ #toprusgym

Henkilön Top Russian Gymnastics (@toprusgym) jakama julkaisu Helmi 1, 2018 kello 7.16 PST

don't call the Queen fat

Just a quick and short post about an old and rather hilarious incident between Queen Aliya and Lidia Ivanova...

Lidia Ivanova proudly wrote in her memoir that she once called the mighty Aliya Mustafina fat. And when the conversation in question wasn't going like she wanted it to (surprisingly), she proceeded to insult the Queen's sacred bitchface. How she's still alive after offending My Tsaritsa, I don't know.

This Bitch

The Best and Worst of 2017: The Routines

Team Russia had some great routines last year. And plenty of bad ones... But these are my picks for the best and worst routines for 2017. I didn't bother to include that many worst ones, the few I picked just happen to be close to my heart.

The National Team of 2017

The Best and Worst of 2017: The Gymnasts

I decided to reward the team with my own personal awards honorable mentions for the past year. Some are good, some not, but that's the Russian way. Here's everyone who made my list.

The Champion of the Year: Aliya Mustafina

What can I say? She's pretty much the Champion of every year and she didn't even have to compete to win. No, she just gestated and pushed out an entire baby and returned to training only after a few months. Because she's the Queen.

"But I thought it [coming back to gymnastics after giving birth] would be way harder." -Aliya Mustafina

An Unfortunate Calendar

If this is the way Russian gymnastics is going to look this year, I am not okay.

I was looking for pictures for my next post and unfortunately stumbled right into the calendar pics from the Russian Gymnastics Federation. They've released most of the pictures ages ago, but seeing them all together just reminded me of how much a I hate them. The only gymnast looking even half decent is Aliya Mustafina, and that's just because she's the Queen and it's nearly impossible to make her look ugly. They still managed to make her look like Mary Poppins ready to take off without an umbrella and I don't know why. Thank God for that gorgeous face though.

Round Lake Update with Grebs and the Euros team

The main news this time is, that Evgeny Grebenkin announced the Russian team for European Championships. I'm going to have to take a guess, that he locked up V-Rod in a closet in order to get to say anything to the media, let alone do something as Valentina as announce teams. Crazy. I'm also going to take a guess that V-Rod already has taken action about this, scratched her way out of that closet and given 100 possibly semi-offensive and probably conflicting interviews to make up for Grebs' one, but I'm not going to even bother to check. Whatever.

The (current, nothing is ever final with Russia) team consists of the main suspects, Angelina Melnikova, Elena Eremina and Natalia Kapitonova, but saw the surprise return of Maria Paseka. Masha hasn't competed since the Olympics. She took a break because of back problems and because after completing two Olympic cycles, she really earned it. But she returned to training in December and was supposed to compete at nationals, but didn't. This is one of those cases when I'm not going to really believe that she's competing until I see her marching to the arena with the audience cheering and music playing, but I'm not opposed to her selection either. Even if she's semi-back, she should be able to medal easily. I just really don't want to see another Moscow 2013 from her. It was dreadful and heartbreaking to watch and please, no more. So I really, really hope that she's ready this time. We haven't really seen anything from her apart from some training footage of a bad DTY.

The selection of Kapi, Melka and Lena makes perfect sense and I'm happy that for once the veterans are (nearly) gone and we're seeing a young team of 2000-2001-born girls. It should give them some motivation and the opportunity to rise to the occasion and prove that Russia is not just Aliya Mustafina. That they can achieve something without her and don't need her, Ksenia Afanasyeva and to some extent Viktoria Komova to carry their entire team and earn all of their medals. Of course there's a 90% chance that they will only prove that Russia is yet again nothing without the veterans, but let's stay optimistic.

A Look into the Near Future of Russian Gymnastics with Andrei Rodionenko

An anon sent me this interview, and someone asked if I could translate it. It was actually conducted a few weeks before the Russian Championships and mostly focuses on the controversial replacement of Leonid Arkayev with Sergei Zelikson, but there are a few questions about the national team. I'll go over the Mordovia part rather quickly paraphrasing the interview and concentrate on what he says about the Russian and European Championships. 

I'll also add some other interviews that he did recently to the end of this post. Spoiler: He disagrees with Valentina about the European team. According to him, it isn't even named yet and won't be for another month.

Russian Championships 2017: Post-Competition Round-Up

Now that the competition is over, let's take a look at what we saw. You also sent me plenty of links, so I think I'll go over some of them too. Oh, and Valentina Rodionenko has obviously announced the European Championships team that will change 1000 times before the actual competition, so we'll get to that too.

But let's start with a short interview about Aliya's impressions of the competition, because she managed to sum up my own opinion too:

Not Drawn to the Podium

Let us remind you that Aliya Mustafina is in a great position for a girl - the 22-year-old athlete is pregnant and taking a break from her sports career. At the Russian Championships in Kazan, Aliya was not only the guest of honor, but also did commentary for the competition. 

-How does it feel to be only in the role of a cheerleader and commentator? You don't feel drawn to the podium yourself?
Not yet, doesn't temp me [smiles]. I'm content with what I have. I'm very glad that during this pause in my career I still have the opportunity to be around gymnastics.  

-What kind of impression did the championships in Kazan leave?
The organization of the event was of the highest level. I liked everything, and from the athletes' point of view, I can tell that they agreed. Kazan gave a great opportunity to prepare for the upcoming international competitions. It was evident that the girls who competed at the Olympics are still getting back in shape. But those who are only aspiring to get to the national team, showed quite good results. This is just the beginning of the season, there are new rules it is too early to make any conclusions. 

-What can you say about the changes made to the rules of artistic gymnastics, the evaluation of difficulty in particular?
I cannot say if it will make the athlete's job easier or more difficult. The fact that they lowered the baseline of difficulty score 0.5 points has no effect. And as for the connections, you can get used to everything and it will all work out. [note: I have no idea if I translated this sentence anywhere near correctly, probably not]

Russian Championships 2017: Meanwhile in Kazan...

It was a rough start for everyone...

Russian Championships 2017: Finally a good day

Today was Day 1 of event finals, and we had a high quality stream again. Too bad that whoever was responsible of the stream, didn't really care about WAG and kept the cameras on the men. They actually tried to show both by having a tiny box in the corner of the screen with a different footage, but gave up on that within two minutes and went back to MAG. The Russian WAG team is much more accomplished than the men, just saying. At least show both tomorrow.

I would have really loved to see more, because it looked like the girls were finally, finally getting their life together. Not only did we have plenty of acceptable and good performances, but there were even a few brilliant ones. 

As a plus, we had Aliya Mustafina commentating. She has such a relaxing and soothing voice that I think she could make even beam finals less nerve wracking. She will be put to the ultimate test tomorrow.