Russian Championships 2017: At least it's over now

I think I ended yesterday's post with "Let's hope that tomorrow won't ruin my good mood." so naturally it had to happen. Day 2 of the event finals was another day of falls after falls. It was pretty much what I expected on beam, but I was still hoping that they'd surprise me positively, like they did on bars. But no such luck.

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.

From Russia to Rio: Floor Exercise

4th and final installment of this series, unless I suddenly get super inspired and do a separate one just for individual AA.

FLOOR EXERCISE:

Floor is where Russia loses most against their main rivals. They are lacking in difficulty and creativity (and conditioning) and most of the team struggles to break 14. It's been like this the entire quad and they've done little to fix it, while other teams have made the gap even larger year by year. We can only hope for better results next quad, but if the team administration doesn't change (they currently focus on complaining instead of working), I don't see any major improvements coming. It's starting to look like the situation with Romania and I really don't want Russia to end up like that next quad.

The Russians compete for worst vault of the day in Stuttgart!

And the winner is...... Shelgunova! With a score of 12.550. Not only did she fall, but she also underrotated a DTY badly enough to get her vault devalued. What a performance. Watch the action here:

Dmitrieva came in second with a DTY worth 13.250 and Melnikova third with a DTY worth 14.250. A DTY that scores over 14, wow. Kapitonova competed the worst worst vault. A solid FTY. The score (13.900) was bit lower than Melka's, but I'm giving Melka the bronze medal for terrible execution. Congrats to everyone!

Oh, and a special mention goes to my favorite, Seda Tutkhalyan, who competed at a different competition but still stuck to the party line with 13.400 for an underrotated DTY with hands down. Amazing camaraderie, just like in Glasgow.
------
Now that the awards for the worst vaulting have been given, I'm going to move on to the actual competition, DTB Pokal Team Challenge. I'm actually really happy that we got an entire team of Russians for this competition. They kept the most important (and injury prone) players at home, and failed to acquire a visa for Maria Kharenkova (who was supposed to compete in Glasgow World Cup earlier), but sent a team of youngsters, all of whom are fighting for one final spot on the Olympic team, to Germany to show their skills.