Knesia Afanaseyva is World Champion!!!!

Amen!

I stated in my warm up post for the event finals how sad I was that Afan had not made the FX final, and the gods of gymnastics answered my prayers. I was upset that Ferrari had to drop out for that to happen and I wish her all the best. I was actually hoping Ferrari would win, so she was well represented, that is for sure. After so many years of delivering for the Russian team and faltering when it came to individual glory Knesia put it together, in style! Her choreography is just at another level of fabulousness and her attitude is what the sport needs to remind itself of the good old days. She has in the past succumbed to nerves, but today she was all in, she went strong in all the tumbling passes, but what I think really won it for her were the turns. She had been falling out of the double turn with the leg back all week and the one with leg at 90 degree just was not finishing strong and clean, but today both were right on. You could see her concentration in each of these and it paid off, big time! When the score changed you could see her shock and then the sheer joy.

Dear Knesia Afanaseyva, today you are World Champion on Floor Exercise and nobody deserves it more than you. When I see you perform I am reminded why I love gymnastics and why I stay up until 3 am to watch a sport going on half way across the world. I hope you come back next year bigger and better because I think Olympic Champion suits you to a teeth.

Sui Lu came up a couple of routines before Afan and also gave it all, I was really impressed at her steadiness and her confidence, the tumble was clean and again the turns were great: a quad turn and a double with the leg at 90 degree. She really put a performance worthy of that silver. I was hoping Sui Lu would leave the floor today with two world medals to her name and she did, so I am very happy.


Raisman got herself an individual medal here, but not exactly what she was gunning for. This bronze on floor was well deserved but I truly believe she will never challenge the top contenders until she gets herself some decent turns... Seriously, she is doing one single simple turn in that whole routine while 100% of the field is doing two double turns or even more than that! Catalina Ponor with all her form problems is trying a quad turn for crying it out loud! She needs to get this going, fast...

I was happy that we had 8 hit routines in the floor finals, yes there were some slips: Lauren Mitchell got tangled with her leap sequence but pulled one in the end in order to not miss the requirement, others had low landings and all, but it was quite good and I like when people hit, that is what EF should be about, 8 hit routines and the best of the night takes it (Do you hear me Komova, you have to hit to actually win!!!! I love you and hope they were just being conservative and you are not hurt again, but you have to stay on that beam!)

Overall this was a pretty good day!