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!

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.

European Championships 2017: Podium training non-disaster

The podium training today was extremely short on disasters, I'm not sure how to feel about it. Russia is supposed to be awful in podium training, be generally lazy and sloppy with no full routines and something like 5 falls for each gymnast on every apparatus, but maybe the newbies haven't gotten the memo. Then again, Beefarm didn't feel like looking like shit either, and she's a hardcore veteran.

Meet the Team: European Championships 2017

The 2017 European Artistic Gymnastics Championships will take place in Cluj, Romania between April 19 and 23. There is no team competition this year and the gymnasts will compete for individual medals only. The federations are allowed to send 4 gymnasts and the team for Russia is Angelina Melnikova, Natalia Kapitonova, Elena Eremina and Maria Paseka. This team is very young and inexperienced with Maria Paseka being the only veteran, and two of the gymnasts having never competed in any major competitions at the senior level. It's going to be interesting to see how they do, and if any new stars will rise.

I thought I'd really quickly introduce the Russian team to those of you not as familiar with them as us gymternet regulars.

Round Lake Update with Grebs and the Euros team

The main news this time is, that Evgeny Grebenkin announced the Russian team for European Championships. I'm going to have to take a guess, that he locked up V-Rod in a closet in order to get to say anything to the media, let alone do something as Valentina as announce teams. Crazy. I'm also going to take a guess that V-Rod already has taken action about this, scratched her way out of that closet and given 100 possibly semi-offensive and probably conflicting interviews to make up for Grebs' one, but I'm not going to even bother to check. Whatever.

The (current, nothing is ever final with Russia) team consists of the main suspects, Angelina Melnikova, Elena Eremina and Natalia Kapitonova, but saw the surprise return of Maria Paseka. Masha hasn't competed since the Olympics. She took a break because of back problems and because after completing two Olympic cycles, she really earned it. But she returned to training in December and was supposed to compete at nationals, but didn't. This is one of those cases when I'm not going to really believe that she's competing until I see her marching to the arena with the audience cheering and music playing, but I'm not opposed to her selection either. Even if she's semi-back, she should be able to medal easily. I just really don't want to see another Moscow 2013 from her. It was dreadful and heartbreaking to watch and please, no more. So I really, really hope that she's ready this time. We haven't really seen anything from her apart from some training footage of a bad DTY.

The selection of Kapi, Melka and Lena makes perfect sense and I'm happy that for once the veterans are (nearly) gone and we're seeing a young team of 2000-2001-born girls. It should give them some motivation and the opportunity to rise to the occasion and prove that Russia is not just Aliya Mustafina. That they can achieve something without her and don't need her, Ksenia Afanasyeva and to some extent Viktoria Komova to carry their entire team and earn all of their medals. Of course there's a 90% chance that they will only prove that Russia is yet again nothing without the veterans, but let's stay optimistic.

Round Lake Update

There was a new interview with Valentina Rodionenko, published today, and it actually had a tiny bit of real insight instead of her usual ramblings.

First she discusses their outstanding success at the Olympics (okay...) with the interviewer and how she accurately predicted their good results (okay...). Then she goes all soft and mushy thanking everyone on the team about their hard work. This is the most human she has been since bursting into tears when she heard that the team could actually compete in Rio after the threat of a blanket ban. She also mentions that 2017 is a chance for the gymnasts to show their individual capabilities, but the goal of 2018 is clear, qualification for Tokyo. They're building the team with that in mind.

But then it gets more interesting.

Best and Worst of This Quadrennium

Someone asked me to pick my "superficial favorites" and "podiums of shame" on tumblr and I originally meant to add those posts to the series about my favorite routines from this quadrennium, but forgot. But good thing this a blog, not a newspaper so I can just forget stuff and then post it whenever I like. So here we go. The categories were a part of the request, not picked by me.

SUPERFICIAL FAVORITES

BEST LEOTARD

1. Aliya's "lucky blue leo". This leo had some great moments (its Worlds medals include 2013 BB gold, 2014 BB & FX bronze), and it' pretty too. It was definitely one of the favorites among the team too, worn by many.

2. Euros 2016 Team QF. I first wasn’t quite sure about this leo because the rhinestones that go right across the chest looked a bit awkward, but now I actually love the design. Very simple, but still something different. And the color is amazing. The "antlers" on the neck line also good because of the coloring, I'm not a fan of the design when they stick out too much.

3. Baku TF day 2. I just love simple, sporty leos and this one is great. A+.  The patriotic colors are nice and don't seem "forced", and the leo looked good on anyone who wore it, a rarity. I guess this is technically from last quad (they wore it in Jesolo 2012), but I’m just going to ignore that.

A special mention for these two throwback leos:

Vika’s leo gives me those good 2010 vibes, but with a new color. And it must be even luckier than Aliya’s lucky blue one, because Glasgow was the only major competition Vika competed in all quad and this leo got her through alive with a gold medal to top it off. And it looks beautiful on her.

Seda’s vintage leo has survived 3 quads (baby Aliya included), and it actually looks great on her. I love it. 

Round Lake Update with some old friends

The Munich Munchkins. That's my nickname for the half-German Russians, who spend more time in Munich than in Round Lake. Queen Aliya, the leader of the Munchkins, seems to have stayed in one piece since the Olympics and doesn't have any broken parts that need either replacements or regular maintenance at the moment, but Viktoria Komova and Maria Paseka are in Germany.

Vika was diagnosed with some fractured vertebrae before the Olympics and is probably just getting a routine follow-up. I don't think she can return to full training before 2017, but we'll see. Masha has been suffering from back pain for months and was in and out of training because of it all year, but I think this is her first time visiting the German Miracle Doctors, hopefully they'll figure out what's wrong. Vika spent a long time in Russia with a wrong diagnosis and treatment, so Masha should be better off in Munich too. It's October and they're in Bavaria, so my mind immediately went to Oktoberfest, but unfortunately (or fortunately) for the girls, it ended a week ago. No beer and lederhosen treatment for back pain then.

Mr. and Mrs. Ksenia Afanasyeva

I'm going to post about the gymnastics galore Russia had yesterday night when we get better footage (I hope the event was televised...), but while the rest of Russia's gymnastic elite was partying it up with Aleksei Nemov, Afan was busy getting married. She looked beautiful and...very Afan.

Her new husband, Roman Suetin, is a former gymnast and national team member and a current coach working in Moscow. So far it looks like Maria Paseka (the grooms ex-girlfriend?) and Ekaterina Kurbatova were the only WAG gymnasts in attendance.

I wish them many happy years together and a life filled with love and joy!

My Favorite Routines from This Quadrennium (II)

Since the uneven bars is obviously the team's best apparatus, this post is going to be a longer one.

UNEVEN BARS

My favorite has to obviously be Queen of the Uneven Bars Aliya Mustafina just being herself  and taking what's hers, the Olympic gold to be precise. She successfully defended her gold on the same apparatus from London, which is an incredibly difficult feat in gymnastics. She also won Russia's only gold in gymnastics, just like she did in London. After struggling with injuries and low difficulty all quad and being counted out from the race to the Olympic gold, she brought her best to Rio, because that's what mattered. She actually ended up having the highest difficulty score out of all the contestants in the final, and since her execution is always impeccable, there was no stopping her. 

My Favorite Routines from This Quadrennium (I)

I've been meaning to do a compilation post about my favorite Russian routines from this quad (2013-2016) ever since I recovered from the Olympics, but procrastination got in the way. I'll do this one apparatus at a time, so the first part is going to be a bit boring. There's only so much you can get out of vault, especially with Russia.

VAULT

Obviously this moment had to be included, Maria Paseka winning gold on vault at the 2015 World Championships. Look how far she's come after London, her amanar was basically a gymternet joke back then, but now it's solid. And to think that she was out with injuries for almost two years prior to 2015, but came back with a cheng. Not to mention winning silver at the 2016 Olympics, and vaulting the amanar that clinched Russia the Olympic silver during the last rotation of the team final.

My Gymnastic Knights of the Order of Vladimir Putin

Time to reap the benefits of years of hard work. And by benefits, I mean cars, the Russian Olympic medalists get rewarded for their achievements big time (not as great as in Singapore though...). Everyone got knighted (not really) by Putin, some cash depending on their medal and brand new BMWs, X6 for Aliya (gold gets you a better model), X4s for the rest of the team. I can't even imagine tiny Princess Tut driving that giant thing, wow.

Rio 2016: Event Finals Day 1

Vault and uneven bars.

Rio 2016: My Silver Princesses and the Queen

Thank you bad qualifications, it always works for Team Russia! Bad qualifications=good team final.

After the surprise team silver for the Russian men yesterday, the women took another surprise silver. And I'm so happy. I don't even know what I'm most happy about.

• Aliya, who went through hell to get to Rio gets rewarded for her work for Russian gymnastics
• Princess Tut again comes through for her team when it's most needed and hits under pressure again and again
• Gelya turns her tears of disappointment into tears of happiness
• Masha, who had to nervously wait for her one vault for two hours, cliches the team silver with a great performance
• Dasha... did okay I guess
• Aliya and Masha are Olympic medalists, again, after 4 difficult years
• I've seen Dasha, Seda and Gelya grow up from little gymnasts to Olympic silver medalists

Yeah, I can't write a very coherent post right now, I'm too emotional over this. And exhausted. The medals were literally decided during the last rotation and up until that I was a nervous wreck.

Rio 2016: Qualifications - A very Russian start to these Olympics

Can we start over on beam???

Ugh. I didn't want or expect a good qualification from Russia, because that would have been trouble, but this? No, just no. Congratulations to Seda though, for being the most consistent member of the Russian team. Who saw that coming?

Rio 2016: Podium Training

--They actually upgraded! And Melka is back to normal! And it wasn't a disaster! And the Mustafina is back!

I'm so happy about this. Buuuut... I'm also worried. It's too good. It's Russia, so they are supposed to look like a disaster, that's how we know they're going to do well. So many mixed feelings right now. At least Aliya managed to be shaky on beam. That needed to happen. Thank you my Queen. She was also not-so-good on floor. Oh, and Seda fell on beam. What a surprise.

Team Russia Training in Rio

Several Russian news channels brought us some training footage today, nothing terribly interesting (except that Masha is vaulting!), if not for this golden moment that deserves to be archived in the Aliya Mustafina Collection of Awesomeness. And if that archive doesn't exist, it should.

WTF is she even doing, I LOVE HER. Her face when she takes off her hat. And her attack on that poor mic. Apparently there was a bug on it. Gotta keep the Zika away.

Out and About

I've been trying to write Meet the Team: Aliya Mustafina for three days now and it's so difficult. No matter what I write, I feel like I can't adequately describe how amazing she is and why. Maybe tomorrow is my lucky day. I'm also considering splitting it in two parts, Part 1 would be her long career history and Part 2 would be what we can expect from her in Rio.
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The team had some time off yesterday and went sightseeing. It's probably frustrating to get to visit all of these amazing countries and cities and spend most of your time sweating in a training hall and stressing about whether your back can take a few more weeks of torture. So it's nice that they at least had a day to do something else. They took the opportunity to visit Christ the Redeemer and take a stroll on the beach.

Dasha posted a short video of their trip, looks like Aliya has the panda with her in Rio <3

It's technically winter in Rio (yes, the Summer Olympics takes place during winter), but both the water and air temperatures stay above 20 °C. How nice. It's actually summer in here, but much colder. I need to move to closer to the equator.

We haven't had much news about the training, but maybe it's better that way, because whenever there's news about Team Russia, it's always bad. The doctors are evaluating Beefarm today and we should know by Wednesday whether or not she can compete. Fingers crossed. Kapi is their first alternate, but I was trying to imagine her in the team and I couldn't figure out a place for her. Masha would only do vault and Kapi has a FTY, so she obviously can't replace Masha there. Melka, Seda and Aliya have DTYs so they could just go as a 4-member team without Kapi. Perhaps if they want to take some of the load off from Melka and save her and her bad hamstrings for the all around, they could put Kapi on floor instead of her. They'd lose a few tenths though. Kapi also has a more difficult bar routine, but I would rather rely on Melka, she's more consistent and has much more experience. And the only way they could use Kapi in qualification on bars would be at the expense of Seda's all around, I'm not sure if I'm okay with that. And let's face it, Kapi is terrible on beam, so even injured Melka would be better there.

I found this news clip, but they show only conditioning and beam choreography from the girls. What's interesting though, is that Dasha is shown on floor and beam, so they are probably not going to risk 3-up-3-count in qualification and use Dasha instead.