Throwback Thursday: Gymnix 10 Years Ago

L'International Gymnix has been held every year for more than 20 years, so it's natural that the meet has had some very reputable gymnasts as contestants. For Russian gymnasts in particular, the meet has often given us international debuts of their most promising juniors. The 2008 Gymnix 10 years ago was no exception, we saw 12-year-old Anastasia Grishina and 11-year-old Nailya Mustafina, the Queen's little sister, at the top of the podium. Nastia obviously went on to have a semi-successful (but considering her talent, still disappointing) senior career, but Nailya broke her leg while still a junior and never recovered to compete at her old level.

I might be the only one who finds watching old videos of absolutely dreadful quality even slightly entertaining, but here you go anyway. It's a bit comforting to see that even Grishy had a rough time, so clearly there's hope for the rest of them too. Although, no matter how many mistakes Grishy made, she still looked nothing short of exceptional with the way she carried herself. And Nailya... Such a talent at only 11. I remember many people thought she was more promising than Aliya. I think she was younger and had more difficulty and skills, but lacked Aliya's finesse. Time would have shown, but it wasn't to be.

this is me getting overly excited about a really small meet

The roster for WOGA Classic (on February 18th) was released and IT HAD RUSSIANS! Two and a half of them, to be exact. The two Baby Swans flying across the pond this time are Angelina Simakova and Ksenia Klimenko, who are both competing at the elite competition for juniors. The reason I got really excited is Klimenko, aka Ksyusha, who is currently my favorite Baby Swan. I've probably mentioned this about 100 times before, but she's gorgeous.

Just look at those lines.

Because of her young age (born in 2003), she hasn't competed internationally before, but it looks like that's about to change. Let's hope that someone in the audience appreciates true beauty and records and posts her routines on YouTube. So far it has been a pain to find quality footage of her.

Sima already has plenty of experience and plenty of typical Russian headcasing under her belt, but I'm really happy to see her too. She really underperformed at the Europeans, so hopefully she'll take this chance to really show what she can do. It's early in the season and she's a Russian junior, so probably not though...

The last half from my two and a half Russians is Irina Alexeeva. She's technically fully Russian, but since she has trained at WOGA since forever and is planning to switch nationalities, I'm only counting her as a half. She's the most advanced junior attending, so she's probably going to get quite a few gold medals.