V-Rod Announces the European Championships Team

We all know that Valentina Rodionenko has a habit of announcing a lot of teams in a short amount of time, and she's been surprisingly quiet about the European Championships team. I've been waiting for her daily calls to R-Sport, but it hasn't happened. So this team announcement from her could actually we slightly more reliable than usually, but who knows.

According to V-Rod, the Euros team was selected after recent control training and will be Angelina Melnikova, Angelina Simakova, Ulyana Perebinosova, Lilia Akhaimova and Irina Alexeeva. I don't know what to say, this is very surprising. The most surprising thing is, that Anastasia Ilyankova was left out. I can't come up with any other explanation except that she's injured. Because I was sure she was a lock. The other person left out from my predicted team is Viktoria Komova. Apparently she failed to prove herself after an unsuccessful Russian Cup by making mistakes on both bars and beam during control training and they just can't trust her on beam. I'm not that surprised about Vika's fate, but which one of these gymnasts can you trust on beam, Valentina, really???

Vika and Ilya's spots were taken by Ira and Ulya. Ira had a minor injury so she didn't compete at the Russian Cup, but she's apparently fine now. And I might be just fine with her going, who else could they pick if Vika and Ilya are out of the question. I don't think she's necessarily medal material, but she's fit for the team competition. Ulya however... What kind of dream training did she have? We're not trusting Vika, but I would trust Ulya even less. I actually thought she was injured, because she didn't compete at the Russian Cup, but no. She could be used on vault and bars, maybe floor, but she's even more inconsistent than Vika. I guess they're hoping that she hits that wild UB routine of hers for once for a surprise medal.

I'm still a bit weirded out by Ira's sudden return to Russia. I've seen her as basically an American for years now. And now she will be an official part of the Russian team. I just tried to picture Ira wearing a national team leo (like this one), but couldn't.

The Nominative Teams for European Championships

The nominative teams for the 2018 European Championships were published a few days ago and the senior team was named Viktoria Komova, Angelina Melnikova, Angelina Simakova, Ulyana Perebinosova and Maria Kharenkova. I don't even know what to say. Maybe just laugh? Because it's not like they're even trying to name a team here. They're just throwing random names out there. Which is technically allowed, but I think most countries still make a little bit of effort into naming the nominative team.

Russian Cup 2018: Event Finals

The event finals of the Russian Cup were pretty underwhelming, it seemed like everyone important was already over this competition and thinking about getting some rest before the European Championships next month. Melka only competed in the uneven bars final which was a good decision in my opinion.

I couldn't catch the live feed because I've spent 60 hours of this week at work, but I'm trying to write this post based on scores and any videos I can find. As of yet, no one has posted the full coverage to YouTube.

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.

Freezing in Mallorca

The team is on their annual training vacation in Mallorca and unfortunately the weather as been very cold for this time of the year. Based on social media it looks like they have gotten a few days on the beach and pool, but the rest of the time has been spent shivering and training. And in case of Vika and Masha, all kinds of dangerous activities. I'll be happy if we get those two back unharmed. Queen Aliya stayed in Penza according to her individual training plan, but Lena made it to Mallorca and is training again, at least lightly.

Have fun, girls!

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.

Jesolo 2018: Senior Event Finals Medal Fest

Today was the final day of Jesolo and it included all of the event finals, both senior and junior. While the juniors basically dominated the competition, the seniors did good too. Angelina Melnikova is finally starting to look like herself and competed in every event final today, winning 3 medals, silver on vault and bronze on bars and beam. Anastasia Ilyankova took the gold medal on bars as expected. Even Eleonora Afanasyeva was able to shake off yesterday's disappointments and won bronze on vault.

Here's a recap of the competition:

Jesolo 2018: Senior Team and AA Final

I already wrote post about Jesolo today, but here's another one, because the seniors competed today as well. The Russian senior team consisted of Angelina Melnikova, Ulyana Perebinosova, Anastasia Ilyankova and Eleonora Afanasyeva. Eleonora was a last minute replacement for Lilia Akhaimova. I get that they technically fill the same floor specialist position in the team, but this competition format (4-4-3) really favors all arounders, so I don't understand why they didn't pick Maria Kharenkova instead. Then again, she looked terrible in Stuttgart, maybe she needs some time to reload.

Before the competition even started, I had a bad feeling. I don't think we've ever had a team with a bigger chance of a complete meltdown on bars AND beam. On paper, the uneven bars rotation looks amazing. Ulya, Melka and Ilya all have Worlds event final level routines. It's just that they're all terribly inconsistent. Or Melka and Ulya are, Ilya is just inconsistent, not terribly so. On beam they're all total meltdown material. Ulya can be just plain terrible. And then we have Eleonora, the wild card. How will she handle this competition? She looked really lost during training. All the other girls were doing their normal warm-up in unison and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. I guess she hasn't been spending that much time at Round Lake.

Like with juniors, I wrote this post while I watched the competition to save some time, so mistakes and bad grammar (even more than usually) will follow.

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.

Stuttgart World Cup 2018: doing team final the Romanian way

So... Russia competed at Stuttgart and promptly disqualified themselves out of the team final. They're testing my patience. Because they have no excuse. It was not a bad team. Viktoria Komova, Anastasia Ilyankova, Lilia Akhaimova, Maria Kharenkova and Viktoria Gorbatova. Almost all of them belong to the better half of athletes they have right now. How can you go to a meet with a team of this caliber and screw up so badly. How? HOW? I don't know if you noticed, but I'm a little bit mad right now. Yeah, the other teams had some Worlds level gymnasts, yeah, it's really early in the season, yeah, the Russians downgraded and are saving their strength for Nationals in order to hit the perfect combination of utter disaster and great potential they so value there. And to be honest, this competition had really strict scoring. But even with these things considered, it was pretty bad.

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

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.

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: It got worse

Today was the AA final and we actually had the best stream we've had in awhile. Too bad the performances weren't able to match it. I'm really missing Aliya right about now. She usually looked fabulous no matter how small a meet, and even when she wasn't ready for a competition, she failed with poise and elegance. I can't really say the same about this lot. When they suck, they just suck. Ugh. But it wasn't really as terrible as it seems, I still think that they can get their shit at least somewhat together by Euros.

Although Elena Eremina's face says it all about this meet.

AA: 1. Natalia Kapitonova 2. Elena Eremina 3. Evgenia Shelgunova

Russian Championships 2017: Sluggishness AND upgrades aka Best of Both Worlds

So I predicted either sluggish B-grade gymnastics or surprising upgrades and I got both? Thank you Team Russia!

Melka is eyeing the position of a new Russian Queen now that Aliya is out of the way. 

Russian Championships started out with a combined team competition and individual qualifications with Moscow taking the team title ahead of Central (2nd) and St. Petersburg (3rd), and Elena Eremina leading the all around with a first day score of 55.366. Clearly Kalugina had her confused with someone else as she looks relatively injury-free and right now is a serious contender for the Russian European Championships team. She's actually a serious contender for the European AA podium with the way things are going.

Russian Championships 2017: Your regularly scheduled "everyone is injured or dying" -pre-competition update

Russian sports journalist Natalia Kalugina wrote a facebook post about the Russian team ahead of the National Championships, taking place in just a few days, and as usual with Team Russia, the situation is nothing short of dystopian.

That's it. The cycle has ended. Another began. On Tuesday the team will leave for Russian Championships in Kazan. Almost none the Olympians will compete at the start of the new season. Head coach Andrei Rodionenko softly says: "And what did you expect? Olympic Games - that's the way it is, right?"

Finally some wise words from A-Rod.

Kalugina only mentioned the men's team in her original post, but in the comments someone asked about the women and she didn't have much good to say. To her it seems that the burden of leadership has fallen upon Angelina Melnikova. Seda Tutkhalyan is somewhere up there with her, but Daria Spiridonova has not yet recovered from the Olympics. Natalia Kapitonova is in the middle of a growth spurt, and [her coach] Starkin is currently trying to figure out how to adjust her routines and technique accordingly. Elena Eremina has some very bad (but unspecified) health issues. In any case, she'll miss the first half of the season. This is a bit surprising, since we just saw Lena training as usual, and she also posted a picture of herself on her way to Kazan. We have no official word on any health issues, where did this come from??? I really don't know whether or not to believe Kalugina on this one, we will see on Wednesday. If it's true, it's going to be very bad news for the team this year.

The only ones still alive.

Baby Swan Graduates: Anastasia Ilyankova

Nastia is from Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Siberia, and currently the only gymnast representing the region on the women's national team. Interestingly enough, Siberia produces a lot of men's national team members, but Nastia is the first woman in awhile. She is coached by S.V. Kiselev and N.V. Kiseleva. Nastia is a long time national team member with a lot of international experience to prove it. She has been on the Russian Gymnix team three times, and was part of their gold medal winning Junior European Team last year. When Melka turned senior last year, Nastia grabbed herself the newly free top junior spot, slightly edging out Elena Eremina for it. Her titles include 2016 Junior European Champion on uneven bars and balance beam, 2016 National Champion on all around, bars and floor, bronze medalist on vault. She also has a huge pile of assorted medals from competitions like Russian Hopes, EYOF, Gymnix, Voronin Cup etc.

I have very mixed feelings about Nastia, which is a pretty accurate description of her gymnastics. Mixed. She's just one of those gymnasts who seems to effortlessly switch between moments of true beauty and regular mediocrity, making me crazy in the process. She's also a confusing mix of a very typical Russian junior with nicely pointed fingers throughout an inconsistent performance, and someone who gets the job done, but doesn't care how. She has the basics of a gymnast with more than average finesse, plenty precision, elegant movement and nice lines, but the next moment she has knees and feet everywhere they shouldn't be and she stumbles through her routine like a rhino. Ugh. However, there's one exception: bars. She somehow manages to look only beautiful on bars, leaving her various form issues behind when she steps on that podium. I will never figure her out.