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.
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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.
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