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: 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: 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.

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.

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.