Baby Swan Graduates: Viktoria Gorbatova and Viktoria Panchuk

The two Viktorias will share the same post, because neither of them is likely to make a huge splash as a senior. I think the two of them will keep competing at national level and maybe win some medals when everyone else is a disaster (à la another Viktoria we know, Trykina, to be precise), but won't be contenders for any major teams.

Viktoria Gorbatova (Виктория Горбатова) is from Khimki and represents the Central Federal Okrug. She shares the same coach with another Baby Swan Graduate, Angelina Simakova. They're both coached by Irina Kolobova. She was never the junior to watch, but she has trained with the national team since forever (probably partly thanks to her coach and her more famous teammate) and has even managed to scrape out quite a few medals during her junior career (on every event, too). She's a pretty balanced all arounder and clean and beautiful to watch everywhere. Her routines are simple, but well executed. To me her best event is bars. She has a basic Russian routine with all of the usual elements from a bunch of stalders and flighty shap half to a piked jaeger and it could be easily upgraded into the standard Russian high scoring routine, ignoring that double pike dismount. As I said before, she's usually nice and clean, but she showed up to the Voronin Cup looking like a mess on bars. I don't know if it was because of an injury or a growth spurt, or if she's just the average Russian mess who just likes being a mess, but ugh. Her beam is mostly simple, but clean and steady (let's again ignore the Voronin Cup) and the same goes with floor too. She a pretty poised gymnast on floor and it makes her look good, but unfortunately she's not that memorable. On vault she has an okay FTY.

Routines: VT|UB|BB|FX

Viktoria Panchuk (Виктория Панчук ) is from Dzerzhinsk and represents the Volga Federal Okrug. She is coached by L. Bolshakova.  Her junior career has been the most modest out of the new graduates and I'll have to admit that out of the two Viktorias, I always preferred Gorbatova. But now that I went back and watched a bunch of their routines, I'll have to admit that Panchuk actually showed great promise at some point. And interestingly, she competed as a Master of Sport (like most Russian promising juniors during their last junior years), while Gorbatova never made it out of the Candidate level. Weird, considering Gorbatova was much more successful. Then again, this would partly explain why Gorbatova was more successful... Never mind. Unfortunately Panchuk was out for all of last year, so her current status remains unknown and because Russia is Russia, she might forever be lost. I think she's good all around and doesn't really have a best event. She has some form issues on her basics and because of that, isn't the most elegant gymnast, but she did show definite improvement during the short time we actually saw her.

Routines: VT|UB|BB|FX

Baby Swan Graduates: Valeria Saifulina

Valeria Saifulina (Валерия Сайфулина), or Lera, is from St. Petersburg and coached by the famous Kiryashovs. In case you were wondering, that makes her a teammate of Elena Eremina and Tatiana Nabieva, so she's in good company. She even shares many of the same characteristics of their gymnastics. A famous coach comes with great opportunities in Russia, so her junior career has been busy. Her national medals include 2015 silver in all around and vault, and bronze on floor exercise, 2016 bronze on vault and bars, and 2017 gold on vault. She missed out on the Junior European Championships, but has competed regularly in the smaller competitions, such as Gymnix. Last year she competed at the European Youth Olympic Festival, where she won gold with her team and individual gold on vault. When she's not busy competing and training (and a lot of the times when she is), she makes appearances on the St. Peterburg girls' YouTube channel.

Baby Swan Graduates: Varvara Zubova

Varvara Zubova (Варвара Зубова), Varya, or ZubZub is from Moscow and represents the city at national competitions. She is coached by Vladimir and Elena Kuznetsov/a. She became gymternet famous when she was just a teeny tiny gymnast, so I still can't actually believe that she's a senior. Not only was she gymternet famous, she was also noticed by the national team when she was just a tiny baby, so her international career is very long, illustrious and occasionally strange. I swear she was once sent all the way to Asia just for a compulsory floor routine.

Her many, many medals from Russian Nationals include 2014 gold on floor and silver on all around, 2015 gold on beam and bronze on all around, 2016 gold on floor and bronze in the all around and 2017 silver on floor and bronze in the all around. Internationally she's a 2016 Team Junior European Champion. Her other international competitions include the ever traditional Gymnix, Jesolo and European Youth Olympic Festival, where she won bronze in the all around.

Baby Swan Graduates: Aleksandra Schekoldina

Aleksandra Schekoldina (Александра Щеколдина), also known as Schek or Sasha, is from Surgut and represents the Ural Federal Okrug. Like Sima, she was born in 2002, is a long time Junior National Team member and even has the same strengths as a gymnast, so the two have been confused for one another quite a few times. She's very talented and promising, but has struggled with inconsistency and injuries, so her junior career is a lot more modest than her close rival's. She's a 2016 National Champion on vault and won balance beam and all around silver, but got injured later that year and spent the late 2016 and early 2017 trying and failing to come back. She did compete a few times, but always with disastrous results. To be honest, I was seriously beginning to think that she would end up as a regular Russian burn-out before even making it to senior level, but luckily she proved me wrong. In late 2017 she finally returned to competition again, this time successfully and was sent straight to Massilia with Sima. There she won gold on vault. A month later at the Voronin Cup she finished her junior career victoriously by winning the all around and uneven bars gold, and floor exercise bronze.

Baby Swan Graduates: Angelina Simakova

Angelina Simakova (Ангелина Симакова), in short, Sima (another Gelya actually), is from Khimki and represents Central Federal Okrug. She is coached by Irina Kolobova. She is a long-time and very prominent member of the Junior National Team and probably the most promising of the new graduates. It doesn't hurt that her strengths are currently the National Team's weaknesses, so she's also most likely of the new kids to make important teams. She was injured for most of her last junior year and seems to have struggled with injuries in 2016 too, but her list of both national and international titles is still very long. Veeeery long....

Her National titles lead all the way back from 2014 to 2016 with plenty of gold medals in the all around, uneven bars and vault, without forgetting some silvers and bronzes on balance beam and floor exercise. She's a 2016 Team Junior European Champion and a veteran and regular medalist of the usual international meets that Russia sends their juniors to, such as Top Gym, Gymnix and Junior Japan International. During her last junior year in 2017 she pretty much dominated WOGA Classic winning one bronze and silver and three gold medals (including all around) and competed at Massilia, where Russia usually sends their most promising juniors right before turning senior. In Massilia she won all around, floor exercise and balance beam gold and uneven bars silver. I don't know if you made it through that list of accomplishments, but if I lost you, don't worry. The only thing you need to remember is that she had an amazing junior career and is really good at winning medals on every apparatus.

Baby Swan Graduates: Class of 2018

It's 2018 and some brand new former Baby Swans are braving the Russian senior team. This year we have technically six gymnasts that have been or are national team level (most of them have spent a decent amount of time injured during these past few years), but two of them I count as more promising ones and two more the most promising. We'll still go over each one of them individually to wish them the very best. May they all exceed expectations and survive the dangerous-for-little-Russians transition into senior.

With our well-wishes out of the way, here they are: Angelina Simakova, Varvara Zubova, Aleksandra Schekoldina, Viktoria Gorbatova and Viktoria Panchuk. We'll remember you in our prayers to GymGods!

Angelina Simakova and Varvara Zubova

Aleksandra Schekoldina and Valeria Saifulina

Viktoria Gorbatova and Viktoria Panchuk

More posts about these Baby Swan Graduates to follow.

And just because... Here's an ask that I received last year that made a reference to one of my Baby Swan Graduates posts from 2017. It unfortunately went unanswered like most of my asks last year, partly because I'm a bad person and partly because tumblr's asks were having this bug that made new asks invisible to me, but I'm really sorry for not answering and thank you so much for sending it to me. It made my day when I finally received it.

Yes, she really did it. I'm so proud.

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.

Baby Swan Graduates: Elizaveta Kochetkova

Liza is from Moscow and coached by E.P. Baidina and V.V. Gurov. Out of the four new seniors, she has had the most modest junior career. She was never in any major teams and competed internationally only in a few very small competitions, but is now training with the national team at Round Lake. She could make the reserve team and perhaps compete in some smaller meets, but she'd have to improve significantly to be a part of the main team.

To be honest, I never really paid much attention to her, but she finally managed to impress me at the Voronin Cup last December. She is a fairly good all arounder, but rather unsurprisingly for a Russian, best on uneven bars. She's tall and leggy and benefits from her naturally nice lines, but she also has good execution and quality of movement to back that up.

Baby Swan Graduates: Ulyana Perebinosova

Ulya is originally from Kuznetsk, but she trains in Moscow and is coached by Marina Ulyankina, also the coach/former coach of gymnasts like Maria Paseka, Seda Tutkhalyan and Alla Sosnitskaya. She represents the Central Federal Okrug, even though neither Moscow nor Kuznetsk is a part of it, but the Russian teams rarely follow any logic anyway. She made a steady rise through the junior ranks and by 2016, she was expected to be one of the team's top senior all arounders in 2017. So naturally she disappeared completely and her status now is unknown. Before her untimely disappearance, she won gold together with her team at the Junior European Championships, and also took individual silver on bars and bronze on floor. At the Russian Nationals in 2016, she won gold on vault, silver on all around and beam, and bronze on bars.

She has many attributes in common with other Ulyankina's gymnasts and like them, she's not the typical Russian Swan. She isn't nearly as messy as them and she usually has nice, clean lines, but she doesn't have the elegance or finesse of some of her teammates, and hasn't shown much character yet. She's an all arounder with fairly equal ability on 3 pieces. She's best on bars, very promising on floor with nice dance and high, clean tumbling, and one of the few Russians with a DTY on vault, but it's still very inconsistent. Her beam is...ummm...special. Think of junior Maria Paseka.

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.

Baby Swan Graduates: Elena Eremina

Lena is a protegée of the one and only Tatiana Nabieva, and the most promising gymnast to come out of St. Petersburg since her. She is from the same gym and coached by the same coaches, Vera and Aleksander Kiryashov/a. She wasn't the most prominent junior of the team and was overshadowed of gymnasts like Melnikova and Simakova for most of her junior career, but she definitely made up for it during her last year as a senior, when she became the 2016 Junior European all around and team champion. She also won bronze on balance beam. Her other titles include 2015 EYOF team gold and vault bronze, and 2016 Russian National Championships balance beam gold, uneven bars and vault silver and all around bronze, and 2015 Nationals vault gold, balance beam silver and uneven bars bronze.

I took me quite some time to fall in love with Lena, but this year she definitely got me good. In good and bad, her gymnastics reminds me a lot of Tanya. They share a lot of the same skills and the same messy, but strangely fluent and occasionally even elegant execution. And while Lena's presence and character doesn't quite compare to Nabs (how could anything compare to her, really), she has that something, that makes me want to watch her.

Meet the Team: Aliya Mustafina (II)

If you didn't have time to read through my lengthy introduction to Queen Aliya and the history of her reign, shame on you. JK. This post should sum up nicely the most important points of that post and give you an idea of what to expect from her in Rio.

So, to sum up:

• Queen Aliya is a BAMF
• She's the Queen of Russian gymnastics
• And the Queen of elevator selfies
• She also the Queen of handstands
• Let's face it, she's the Queen of everything
• She has too many nicknames to list, so you can just call her the Queen
• She tore her ACL in 2011, but came back in 2012 and won the most medals out of any gymnast in London, she's the reigning Olympic Champion on the uneven bars
• She also established herself as the Queen of tie-breaks, #don't tie with Aliya
• And she had eye-makeup that inspired 1000 YouTube tutorials
• Her uneven bars routine in 2012 was so cool that everybody is still doing it
• She has a Worlds medal on every apparatus, 11 all together
• Once she became the World Champion on her worst apparatus, just to mix things up
• She re-invents herself faster than Madonna, whenever an injury prevents her from doing something, she quickly has a new thing she's the best at
• She kept Russian gymnastics relevant for years all by herself
• She performs best under pressure, when she knows she has to fight and she will steal your medals when you least expect it
• She has a bad knee, bad ankle, bad back, bad shoulder and bad wrist, but she will still steal your medals
• She has more elegance in her fingertips than you anywhere
• Even her mistakes look elegant
• You know what, she doesn't make mistakes, only choreography changes
• She has two and a half skills named after her in the Code of Points
• She can kill you with just her stare, Beware the Stare!

That's Aliya Mustafina. Learn it and appreciate it.

Meet the Team: Aliya Mustafina (I)

This introduction is going to be different from the rest because My Tsaritsa deserves it, and it's impossible to explain Queen Aliya in only a few paragraphs. So I ended up dividing her introduction to two separate posts, the first one (this one, to be exact) is going to be about her career before the Olympics, and the second one (to be published later today or tomorrow) will focus on what she has in store for Rio.
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Aliya Mustafina. My Tsaritsa. Queen Aliya. Musty. Conqueror of the Podium. When I was little, my mother used to say that a loved child has many names, and it certainly applies to Aliya. She is the team captain in Rio and a London veteran. A London Olympic Champion. She's also my favorite gymnast of all time. And she's awesome. And I've been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out how to sum up her awesomeness and it has proven to be impossible. It's too much, she's too awesome. She's the ultimate BAMF. Thank you and goodbye.

Aliya was born in 1994 in Yegorievsk, Russia (Moscow Oblast) to a Tatar father and Russian mother. She was introduced to gymnastics by her Olympic wrestler father, who believed that children needed to do sports, because it was healthy. She was a determined and independent child, who navigated the Moscow metro transit system at a very young age to take her and her little sister Nailya to gym. Her father has often told the story of how she cut her finger and and was told to keep it elevated to help with bleeding and swelling; Aliya went to bed and fell asleep and still managed to keep her finger up throughout the night. She was that determined and disciplined, even as a child.

Meet the Team: Maria Paseka

Maria Paseka (Cyrillic: Мария Пасека), affectionately called Masha (also known as Beefarm in the gymternet due to the Russian meaning of her name), is one of the two Olympic veterans in the team, having competed at the 2012 Olympics in London. She was born in 1995 in Moscow and turned senior in 2011. She is 21 years old and the team's vault specialist in Rio. She was the team's vault specialist also in London, competed successfully there and came home with two medals, team silver and vault bronze. Now in Rio she's the reigning World Champion on vault, and has a good chance of coming home yet with another medal on her best apparatus. She is also the 2015 European Champion on vault.

Russia had a very deep field of junior talent before London and while a good gymnast, Masha didn't stand out among her internationally successful peers. Her only major success as a junior came in 2010 when she made the junior European Championships team and contributed to her team's first place finish. She also took the silver medal on vault, losing the gold to another member of the future London team, Viktoria Komova. Her first senior year was also without much success, she suffered from injuries and inconsistency and didn't make any major teams. Her only international competition was a World Cup in Belgium, where she didn't get any medals. It didn't look like London was in the cards for her.

Meet the Team: Daria Spiridonova

Daria Spiridonova (Cyrillic: Дарья Спиридонова), affectionately called either Dasha, or Spiridoz, is the third Olympic newbie in the team and one of their two specialists. She was born 1998 in Novocheboksarsk, but moved later to train and compete for Moscow. She's 18 years old, a third year senior and an experienced competitor, having made the Russian team for every major competition ever since she turned senior in 2014. This means also that she's a rarity in the team: no major or minor injuries keeping her from training and competing.

Her junior career was short and modest. She was promising on the uneven bars with her beautiful lines and swing, but had messy execution and didn't shine on any other event. It wasn't until she joined the senior team that she started improving, and fast. First it was bronze on the uneven bars at the 2014 European Championships, and later that year, a bronze at the World Championships. The next year she just kept on improving, becoming both the European Champion and World Champion on the uneven bars. Her other major titles include Worlds team bronze, Europeans team bronze and gold, 2016 Europeans uneven bars silver and several national titles.

Meet the Team: Seda Tutkhalyan

Seda Tutkhalyan (Cyrillic: Седа Тутхалян, Armenian: Սեդա Թութխալյան) is the second youngest member of the team, born in 1999 in Gyumri, Armenia, but her family moved to Moscow when she was young. She is 17 years old and a second year senior with plenty of international experience under her belt. She's also interestingly (almost) an Olympic veteran, having represented Russia at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing when she was just a junior. She came out as the best gymnast of the competition, with all around and uneven bars gold and floor exercise silver. She is also both junior and senior European team champion, and European Games team champion and vault silver medalist. She's Russian national vault champion and AA silver medalist. She was also part of Russia's 2015 World Championships team and qualified to the AA and beam finals, but didn't win any medals.

She is a tiny powerhouse and the innovator of the team, not a typical Russian gymnast. Her gymnastics is quick and dynamic, and her energetic routines and selection of skills differ a lot from her teammates. She goes for the difficult and risky instead of the safe and pretty, but she still has something "Russian" about her execution. She is coached by the same coach as another Olympic team member Maria Paseka, and they share some similarities in their gymnastics. She is a talented gymnast with huge potential, but is also the endless source of frustration to her fans and coaches alike. She is very inconsistent and regular underachiever, rarely rising up to that huge potential. She tends to make nervous mistakes under pressure, a great example of a so-called headcase.

Meet the Team: Angelina Melnikova

I wanted to do a series introducing the Russian Olympic Team to any readers that are new to gymnastics and find my blog by chance. This gives you the basics if you are not quite as familiar with the gymnasts, as the hardcore fans who spend their daily lives waiting for devastating injury updates are.

Let's hope that during these Olympics we can turn as many 4-year-fans to gymternet regulars and Russian stans as we can.

Angelina Melnikova (Cyrillic: Ангелина Мельникова, affectionately called Gelya or Melka) is the youngest member and the newbie of this team. She just turned 16 (born in 2000), and made the senior ranks this year right in time for the Olympics. Only it doesn't really feel like it. When she turned senior, it was more like "about time!" than "already? But she's just a baby". She had a long and successful junior career, so it feels like she's been around forever. As the leader of the Russian junior team for years, she has plenty of international experience and the titles to match it. She's a junior European all around, team and balance beam champion, and uneven bars silver medalist, and she spent her last junior year competing against her senior teammates (something that the most promising Russian juniors get to do) and proved herself to be better than most of them. In the senior level, she's the Russian national all around, balance beam and floor exercise champion and European team champion.

Her youth can be both an advantage and disadvantage at the Olympics. On one hand, she's in good physical shape, not too many nagging injuries and years of fatigue, but on the other hand, she lacks the maturity that the years of senior competition bring to one's gymnastics. When it comes to one of the most important, if not the most important aspects of the competition, handling the pressure, she's yet relatively untested. Some new seniors do extremely well with the pressure just because they don't think about it like the older contestants do, but those who think about it, often crumble under it. We'll see which category she belongs to in Rio. If European Championships are any indication, the nerves certainly have their effect on her, but not too much.