A Look at the 2018 Russian Junior Nationals

Now that the Russian Cup is over, we can take a loot at the Russian Junior Championships that were held together with it. Together with Spartakiada, it gives us a pretty good idea of who's going to the Junior European Championships. I've had my team in mind ever since Jesolo and while this competition didn't have any huge surprises, it made me reconsider some things. The good news is, that the junior team has plenty of depth and they pretty much kicked the seniors' ass during the Russian Cup.

Jesolo 2018: Junior Event Finals Medal Fest

Today was the final day of Jesolo and it included all of the event finals, both senior and junior. Russia came out pretty victorious, in addition to gold in the all around, their juniors took 3 out of the 4 apparatus gold medals. This was mostly thanks to an incredible performance from Vladislava Urazova. Ksenia Klimenko won tied gold on her best event, bars. Their teammates Elena Gerasimova and Daria Belousova both made finals as well, but didn't medal.

Golden Girl

Here's a recap of the competition:

Jesolo 2018: Junior Team and AA Final

Today was day 1 of Jesolo and the day began with the junior all around and team final. Russia sent a  4 member team consisting of Ksenia Klimenko, Daria Belousova, Elena Gerasimova and Vladislava Urazova and placed second behind Italy and ahead of France. They had quite a few unfortunate falls, (including two on bars, shame on you kids), but I'm very proud nevertheless. The youngest member of the team, Vlada won the all round competition beating a favorite, Italy's Asia D'Amato. Vlada then made my day even better making the cutest mistake during the awards ceremony. When her name was called, she though she was third (they didn't go with the normal reversed order of the medalists for some reason) and the announcer had to repeat "first place" a few times before she realized her mistake and took the right podium.

I wrote this post while watching the competition live, so it might be a bit incoherent and there are plenty of mistakes, but bear with me.

Gymnix 2018: A party for the new Lena and Vika

My Baby Swans competed at the Junior International Cup of the 2018 International Gymnix, as always, and looked like a healthy combination of beauty and hot mess, as always. This year our team consisted of two Gymnix veterans, Irina Komnova and Elena Gerasimova, and two newbies, Olga Astafyeva and Viktoria Listunova. They won silver in the team competition and a few individual medals too. I actually watched all of their routines and was really impressed.

Ira is apparently still coming back from an injury (ankle, maybe?) and looked tired as hell. She has also grown a lot this past year and while she was once tiny, she's now the tallest of the group by far. This combined with her exhausted appearance and weird mistakes made the poor girl look like she was ready to retire. Lena was the most confident out of everyone without any hint of nerves of inexperience. Olya was extremely nervous and shaky, while Vika spent her time looking suspicious and unsure about why she was even in Canada. I was close to laughing every time they showed her face. I was actually a tiny bit surprised about her selection to the team too, but she did really well for herself and absolutely deserved to be there. Or more than deserved to be there, she had the biggest medal haul with bronze on all around, silver on bars and gold on floor. Lena was next with gold on the uneven bars and bronze on floor.

Russian Junior Nationals 2017: The Invisible Competition

Junior Nationals was last weekend and I was hoping for some videos to appear before going over it, but there are still not that many and I'm not sure if any more will show up. The story of this blog, it seems. There aren't any pictures either, it's like the whole thing didn't even happen. I added some pics from Jesolo instead.

So there's not that much to write about, scores and "she usually looks beautiful on this apparatus" only go so far, but here's a quick recap anyway. As usual, the juniors are split in two groups based on Russia's national sports merits, MC (the older and more accomplished girls) and KMC (younger and less accomplished girls, mostly those born in 2004).

From front: Varvara Zubova, Ksenia Klimenko, Anastasia Agafonova and Valeria Saifulina. Look who's hiding again, what a surprise.