The Nominative Teams for European Championships

The nominative teams for the 2018 European Championships were published a few days ago and the senior team was named Viktoria Komova, Angelina Melnikova, Angelina Simakova, Ulyana Perebinosova and Maria Kharenkova. I don't even know what to say. Maybe just laugh? Because it's not like they're even trying to name a team here. They're just throwing random names out there. Which is technically allowed, but I think most countries still make a little bit of effort into naming the nominative team.

A Look at the 2018 Russian Junior Nationals

Now that the Russian Cup is over, we can take a loot at the Russian Junior Championships that were held together with it. Together with Spartakiada, it gives us a pretty good idea of who's going to the Junior European Championships. I've had my team in mind ever since Jesolo and while this competition didn't have any huge surprises, it made me reconsider some things. The good news is, that the junior team has plenty of depth and they pretty much kicked the seniors' ass during the Russian Cup.

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: 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.