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.

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.

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.

A Normal Day for Russian Gymnastics: Injuries, injuries, doping problems

I told you that it would be a miracle if Valentina managed to stay quiet until the Games. So she had statements and as usual, you're not going to like what she had to say.

Maria Paseka is waiting for doctor's approval to compete. Her back problems are back (if they ever left) and she's not training full loads right now. The doctors will decide August 3rd whether or not she can compete. I want to remain optimistic because she only has to do vault, but since I'm not an optimistic person, it's difficult. That's a huge score in team final, and likely individual medal that they would to lose. I'm just going to hope for the best.

The Three Musketeers Troublemakers

Angelina Melnikova pulled her hamstring way back in Russia and still hasn't recovered. She's also not training with full loads, and they are working to simplify her routines. That is bad, because she's extremely important to the team. She's supposed to do AA in qualifying, team final and individual final. Not to mention this could also ruin her chances for individual medals. Last time when she had hamstring problems, she looked terrible on beam. She should be able to compete, but remember Yao Jinnan in London with a similar injury? Yeah, that was heartbreaking. Melka is the future of Russian gymnastics and I don't want her first and maybe only Olympics to go that way. She deserves so much more. Again, I'm just going to hope for the best.

The third bad news to come out today, is about their reserve, Natalia Kapitonova. The FIG has been working hard to clear the Russian gymnasts for competition, but since Kapi hasn't competed internationally in any major competitions, she has never been tested for doping. Or if she has, the testing has been done in Russia and isn't considered reliable because, well, state sponsored doping programme and Sports Ministry approved sample contamination in RUSADA. There's nothing official yet, so they might be able to clear Kapi and this is just a speed bump.. It's not like she has any convictions either. For the third time, I can only hope for the best. With Beefarm and Melka and their problems, it's not good for one of the alternates to get banned from competing. UPDATE: The FIG cleared her.

We know that Valentina loves drama and isn't usually right about anyone's health (or anything else for that matter), so this might be just her usual shenanigans and there's absolutely nothing to worry about. For the fourth time, I can hope that is the case.

So, what a typical day for Russian gymnastics. All drama all the time.
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Sources: Tass and R-sport

You will want to click on those links just for the pictures of Valentina ;) Deer-in-the-headlights "I don't know no doping!!!" and evil grin "just wait for my next announcement, I have even worse news for you".
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the obligatory olympic village pics i was waiting for

UPDATED WITH MORE PICTURES!
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Yes, they are here. I already posted Aliya's, but here it is again, because she made it. And what a struggle it was, last year it started to look like it wouldn't happen. But she's there and ready to compete. And I'm happy.

I expressed earlier some relief over those rings being on the ground instead of elevated like in London (it inspired a bit too hazardous climbing), but I'm still nervous to see Aliya up there. They're gymnasts, super strong and incredibly coordinated, so they have a far better chance of surviving that climb than me, but I don't have Olympic medals to lose if I fall down. Here's Aliya and Masha tempting the fate:

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.