P.S.: Mustafina with that lower back brace is not making me feel at ease. She cannot afford more injury related setbacks...
And the Russians are on their way...
The 2012 Moscow Championships showed a great bars team, but a rather inconsistent beam ensemble. As I have already discussed in previous posts, the Russians really have a big problem when it comes to beam. Their mercurial personalities just do not lend themselves well to this nerve wrecking apparatus.
And videos of Demy, Vika and Sidorova's routines from Moscow just did nothing to ease my nerves. It is going to be a nail biting rotation come London.
Their BB routines are just wobbly, inconsistent and I think there is a stamina problem there.
It is really too bad for the Russian Gymnastics Federation that Kristina Goryunova was suspended in 2010 for testing positive for a diuretic as she would have been a great possibility for this team. Her beam routine was strong, confident, difficult and spot on. I would have loved to see her in London. The great arms, the polished feet and the fierceness is just priceless.
On UB the Russian team is the dream team. They have so many strong, difficult routines with great lines and natural swing. It is here where they can win big points over their greatest rival, the USA.
Although she fell in a very difficult transition combination to low bar, I was happy with what I saw from Musty. She has upgraded this routine and gone back to her signature dismount which gives her some nice D points. She has clearly grown since 2010 and although that might complicate things in other events, it really helps her on bars as she looks exquisitely lean and natural.
Anastasia Grishina also put up a nice bar routine with a lot of difficulty and just a outstanding dismount: double double. The landing was not great, but it is the beginning of the season and I am happy to start seeing these upgrades.
Vika also showed her signature clean bars, although I am still not thrilled about this half turn before the dismount that seems to be a compositional error, but she did not get deducted for it in Tokyo, no reason to mess with it.
Tatiana Nabieva showed also a clean UB, but without the star quality of some of her team mates. If she can go back to doing the Amanar this bar routine is just the icing in the cake that will get her into this team, but without the big vault, I just don't think the bars alone are going to get her this spot.
I thought Inshina and Sidorova delivered some good and strong floor exercises with nice difficulty, although not as polished as some of the other Russian routines we know are out there.
The FX World Champion showed a routine with a lot of landing errors, but very nice work on the dancing elements. I have confidence in Afanasyeva since I believe it is the beginning of the season and you could see that she was really focusing on the turns and jumps and just throwing her usual passes. I am however disappointed that they are planning to go with the same routine she used last year. We know Sui Lu is cooking up a brand new Adriana Pop routine as probably is Lauren Mitchell and for Afan to really be a contender for that Olympic title she also needs a new and exciting routine the judges have never seen.
The lack of difficult vaults at this competition is also a bit alarming as Russia will be in some trouble if they fail to come to London with at least two Amanars. The Americans are most likely to bring three, if not something even harder (I do believe if anyone is capable of the TTY it is going to be the Vault Champ Makayla Maroney) and the Russians may not be able to make up ground with their bar routines with a possible Douglas-Liukin-Memmel trio there too so they cannot lose too much on vault.
American Cup is right around the corner as is Pac Rims which might be the first US-Russia showdown of the year giving us the opportunity to make some more predictions.
It is going to be a exciting year!!!
