Stuttgart World Cup: Spiri as a vault specialist?

Russia won the Team Challenge! But let's not get too excited...

1. Russia 2. Germany 3. Spain
This was the only picture of the podium, sorry Spain :(

The DTB Pokal Team Challenge final was yesterday and Russia showed up in one of my favorite leotards. They were promising me good things with that leo, but didn't deliver. They did win by several points, but it was not because they were really good.

Stuttgart World Cup: Not getting surgery this time

I always find it a tiny bit confusing when the Russians go to Germany and it's not for some medical treatment. But this time they're in Stuttgart, Germany, trying desperately to prepare for Europeans. Natalia Kapitonova, Elena Eremina, Daria Spiridonova and Lilia Akhaimova are competing at the Team Challenge, and Angelina Melnikova is taking part in the World Cup competition. The original team included Seda Tutkhalyan, and switching her with Kapi probably means that Seda is a lock for Euros already. They're testing Lilia, Lena and Kapi (and Spiri) trying to figure out the rest of the team.

The team with American Infiltrator Morgan Hurd

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: Meanwhile in Kazan...

It was a rough start for everyone...

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

Voronin Cup 2016: The Nabz is back!

The Cup of Mikhail Voronin ended the competition season for our team a week ago in Moscow. It was a nice get together with most of the team present in some form or another. Everyone seemed to be extra tired and sloppy, but in good spirits nevertheless. There was even a live stream, but the competition was such a splatfest (as usual) that I wasn't sure whether to giggle or cry while watching.

Elena Eremina and Lilia Akhaimova easily won the team competition and took home a huge trophy for their efforts. Interestingly enough, while Lena won the junior AA, Lilia didn't even place. I know she's pretty much a one-eventer, but since we're supposed to take her seriously as a national team member now (I'm really struggling with it), she could have snuck in with the weak field they had in this competition. Senior AA went to Daria Elizarova instead, with Polina Fedorova as the runner up.

My Favorite Routines from This Quadrennium (IV)

So this one should be probably named "My Favorite(ish) Routines", because Russia and floor was kind of a disaster this quad. It was a real shame too considering that they were AMAZING last quad, Aliya, Vika, Grishy, Afan, Belo, Myzdrikova, Semy, Demy...how I miss Russia's 2009-2012 floor. Oh well, since I have to stick with this quad, we might suffer from a bit of an Aliya-overdose. If that's even possible.

It actually took me days to assemble nice routines, and after spending more days looking at them and grinding my teeth over naming this mediocre mess "my favorite", I ended up dividing them into two groups. The first group is dedicated to my actual favorite routines, and the second group are the routines that were highlights in the middle of everything terrible, but not really that memorable. Enjoy. Or not. I don't blame you if you fall asleep after the first group.

FLOOR EXERCISE

My actual favorite routines:

Aliya Mustafina immediately brought on her A-game starting in 2013 with TWO new floor routines. I absolutely love her routine from 2013 European Championships. It's very different from her later routines, it almost reminds me of 2010 Aliya. There's just something understated but captivating about it, and that beautiful pose during her "down to the floor" choreography gave us some great pictures. And look at her execution too, the first tumbling line is pretty much perfect, the other tumbles are very well landed too, and powerful. The spins have control, even the almost "Mustafina". We just haven't often seen the perfectionist side of Aliya on floor this quad, but this performance definitely stands out to me. And the extensive amount of time she spends in the corner breathing and uhm... "dancing" before her last tumbling line, it just makes me nostalgic, such classic Aliya.

My Favorite Routines from This Quadrennium (III)

BALANCE BEAM

The day of the 2013 World Championships balance beam final I was visiting my grandmother with my mother and missed it live, but when I came back, I immediately went to my computer (I wanted to watch the actual competition before looking at the results), but before it was even on, my mother had turned on the TV and yelled at me that they were showing highlights. I ran to the living room and looked at Aliya with her gold and my mother was like "isn't she your favorite gymnast, she won, how nice" and I was like "NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND this is BALANCE BEAM, it's her worst apparatus, SHE'S A WORLD CHAMPION on BALANCE BEAM!!!!". And that was Antwerp summed up for me. Of all the great beam workers in that final, it was Aliya who somehow took the gold. This routine is fucking legendary and it kills me that people who didn't follow gymnastics back then are like my mother and will never understand those feelings. Those two years when Aliya's beam was a complete disaster and she scored 11 at an international major competition are lost from memory and there's nothing shocking about her being a World Champion on beam anymore.

the obligatory olympic village pics i was waiting for

UPDATED WITH MORE PICTURES!
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Yes, they are here. I already posted Aliya's, but here it is again, because she made it. And what a struggle it was, last year it started to look like it wouldn't happen. But she's there and ready to compete. And I'm happy.

I expressed earlier some relief over those rings being on the ground instead of elevated like in London (it inspired a bit too hazardous climbing), but I'm still nervous to see Aliya up there. They're gymnasts, super strong and incredibly coordinated, so they have a far better chance of surviving that climb than me, but I don't have Olympic medals to lose if I fall down. Here's Aliya and Masha tempting the fate:

Russian Cup 2016: Event Finals

The Periscope streams we had were terrible and mostly focusing on the men, so I can't really write much about the event finals. Click read more for my short recap of the events.

But more importantly, Andrei Rodionenko announced the Olympic team (yes, again, this the 100th team probably) after the event finals, and it's currently:

• Aliya Mustafina
• Angelina Melnikova
• Maria Paseka
• Daria Spiridonova
• Seda Tutkhalyan
• Alts: Kapitonova, Afanasyeva, Akhaimova

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Here are the event final medalists: 

Vault

1. Maria Paseka 14.867     

2. Seda Tutkhalyan 14.734

3. Tatiana Nabieva 14.234 

Uneven Bars

1. Natalia Kapitonova 15.333  

2. Angelina Melnikova 15.033

3. Daria Spiridonova 14.933    

Balance Beam

1. Angelina Melnikova 15.400

2. Seda Tutkhalyan 13.967      

3. Evgenia Shelgunova 13.867

Floor Exercise

1. Lilia Akhaimova 14.367      

2. Natalia Kapitonova 13.867  

3. Angelina Melnikova 13.733

Russian Cup 2016: A Better Day

I actually wrote this yesterday right after the competition and then forgot to publish it, whoops. So that's why I keep using today and yesterday wrong. Forgive me.
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Today was the Day 2 of all around, with yesterday's scores coming back to haunt everyone. Good thing everyone had equally bad day yesterday, and equally good day today (except for Aliya), so no one suffered too much from yesterday's disaster.

We also got an explanation to that uneven bars fiasco yesterday. Apparently the team has changed their equipment to a new brand and model to match the equipment in Rio (Gymnova if I remember correctly). This particular UB set not only differed from their usual set, but was not "broken in" and had a different fool to it because of that. At least that's what they're saying. I'd think the girls were used to adapting fast to new equipment, but maybe this brand is just very different. Hopefully they get used to it before leaving for Rio. Today most of the girls actually hit their routines, but Aliya was still having difficulties. Since she's the most experienced gymnast, you'd think that it was the other was around, but since she also has nothing to prove, she just didn't want to keep fighting when it didn't feel right. Hopefully it's that instead of those old nagging injuries presenting themselves.

And one more thing about yesterday. If you were wondering like me why most of the national team showed up to a team competition wearing whatever they wanted, I have no answer to that. But I can say that their respective teams were deducted for it on their scores, oops. :D So let's thank Natalia Kapitonova for following the dress code and not costing for her team because of it.

But onto today's competition. Melka owned it, as expected of her. I really wasn't a fan of her when she was a junior, but she's blossomed into a beautiful gymnast and excellent all arounder, how could I not like her. Princess Tut had an impressive performance too for a silver medal and Aliya climbed up from her 5th spot to third. That needed to happen. Shelgie was right at her heels....

1: Angelina Melnikova 117.150 (57.625/59.525) 

2. Seda Tutkhalyan      116.150 (57.075/59.075)  

3. Aliya Mustafina   112.800 (54.900/57.900)      

Russian Cup 2016: Enjoy the Disaster

The Olympics are coming and it's time to show your best, what you're capable of, what you've been working on since you were 5. Or not, if you're Team Russia. There were falls and 12s everywhere, and nearly everybody completely fucked up bars. Aliya got a 12 on bars! Moscow, the deepest team didn't even medal. If this was P&Gs, Marta would have committed a mass murder.

But it was not the P&Gs. It was the Russian Cup, historically a bad event, so let's just enjoy the disaster that only Russian gymnastics can bring. They're so bad it's good.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to Romania. It's nationals and Lari has a concussion and Cata is getting rehydrated in the hospital because of a violent stomach flu. Wow. At least the Russians made it to the meet before combustion.

Weekend with Grebs, Doctor Kitty and the Goddess of Gymnastics

A lot going on these past few weeks. There was Bern, two Princess Tuts, and Classics with Bogi. Afan went to see the German Miracle Doctors and Nastia and Chuso were having fun of their own... Oh, and the Rio medals were announced. I didn't like them.
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Grebs and his gang of girls went out to have some fun in Bern after the competition.

Queen Aliya and Afan were missing. Maybe napping? That's what Aly and I would have done. Let the youngsters who still have energy enjoy it. Or maybe they took the first flight back to Russia to see their boyfriends and have some nice down time home before the next camp. Or in Afan's case, surgery.

Rough Going at Varna World Challenge Cup 2016

Evgenia Shelgunova and Daria Skrypnik competed at the Varna World Challenge Cup in Bulgaria, and managed to win 3 medals, gold for Dasha on bars and silver and bronze for Shelgie on bars and floor, respectively. I wouldn't go ahead and call it a successful competition though, despite hitting two bar routines, Dasha especially looked really rough. I was in pain just watching her floor from qualifying.

She scored 12.700 for a routine without a fall, so she managed to get deductions for pretty much everything. She looks like she's really winded from the beginning and I have no idea how she managed to land the tumbling, pure grit I suppose, and I really congratulate her for that. I must have taken a lot of willpower to get through that. She obviously could use some a lot of conditioning, but her beam didn't go any better. She fell on her Y-turn, downgraded her dismount and looked close to tears afterwards, so maybe she was hurt? She didn't limp though, and the fall didn't look ad at all. Or maybe it was just a really, bad horrible no good day and she didn't feel right. Sometimes you just have one of those days.

From Russia to Rio: Uneven Bars

And we go on to the second part of this series of Team Russia's routines for Rio, time for uneven bars.

From Russia to Rio: VAULT

With the Olympics approaching fast, I thought I'd take a look at what Team Russia has to offer for Rio. This is the first part (1/4) in the series.

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.
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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.

This week in Russian gymnastics

I've had a busy week filled with working on my final thesis and procrastinating. Mostly procrastinating, because whenever I should be doing something important I remember that I have Cities: Skylines. I start playing and notice that the city I built and played for hours and hours has been broken because of a new update. I use mods on plenty of games, but that shitty game is the only one that always, ALWAYS breaks. And then I have to start all over again. It's so frustrating. What was I talking about again?

Oh right, gymnastics. I was trying to explain why I didn't post anything about gymnastics this week. But nothing too important really happened, just a lot of little things so I'm just going to scramble together all the news here in one post. We have lots of great instagram action from Round Lake, Shelgie being Shelgie and Valentina not knowing what's going on. So just the usual.

Let's start with the most important: Rio. Rio Test Event to be precise. Actually, there's no test event for the Russians, because they are not going.