This week Bea, Blythe, Emma and Jessica chat about:
- Romanian Nationals
- Could Larisa Iordache have a higher difficulty value at Worlds than Simone Biles?
- Jessica picks her new junior superstar: Andreea Iridon.
- The state of the Romanian World Team and the dreaded (for the seniors) bars.
- The Swiss, Romanian, Germany Friendly meet
- An update on Swiss stalwart, Gulia Steinbruger.
- Germany’s steller bar workers are getting it done!
- Youth Olympic Games
- The most overwhelming display of affection and sportsmanship we’ve ever seen in the history of gymnastics.
- The educational component of the YOG that none of us knew about!
- Becky Downie pushing her coach away from the camera to stop from dying of teenage embarrassment.
- Vault final was won by a Chinese gymnast, Wang Yan with a big 14.783
- Giarnni Regini-Moran, another sign of the next super power is British Gymnastics.
- Novara Cup
- The fan insanity/zero security for athletes at Italian gymnastics meets.
- The return of veterans, Joana Adlerteg (SWE) and Julie Crocket (BEL).
- Russian Cup
- The return of Victoria Komova on bars from her growth spurt and injury.
- Aliya Mustafina is back, with a vengence!
- The glorious zero-craps-given attitude of Tatiana Nabiyeva.
- Sandra Isbasa to do Romanian Dancing With The Stars.
Get more from Bea over at The Couch Gymnast.
- 90: The 2014 Women’s NCAA Championships! Plus details from the Ljubljana World Cup, Korean Meet and Romania takes on Belgium and France
- 89: Everybody Loves Raymond! Pacific Rim, Men’s NCAA Championships, plus a Russian Championships/Tokyo World Cup recap DO OVER!
- Episode 46: Russian Cup Results and Gabby Dancing With The Stars?
- Episode 3: Russian Regime Change, Fashion Code and a Chat With Anna Li
- Episode 49: Booth on the Alexander Alexandrov Interview
Or watch this week’s playlist on YouTube here.
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I know that Seda and Flavia were totally besties already at Gymnasiade in December 2013! Ellie was there too iirc but the Russian and Brazilian teams really hung out together there, so they were probably very excited to see each other again!
What I like mostly about Mustafina’s work is that.. she just adjusts her routine as she goes. In event finals she wanted to do an arabian+wolf+split but she was off on the wolf jump so she couldn’t compete the split immediately. Instead she competed the split jump after the switch ring. And then she connects things here, then she doesn’t connect them there, and in another routine she’ll do it the other way around when it doesn’t feel well, etc etc. Not many gymnasts can do that.
Regarding her 9 E score – I would say YES. All her turns and leaps were beautifully controlled (THE TRIPLE Y!!!!! TO DOUBLE TURN!!!!). Her passes were double arabian+stag (I’m sure she’ll compete the whips again for worlds), 1,5 to front full (so as far as I saw the helicopter legs were VERY minimal. This might be a little worse when she puts the 2,5 in again) and double tuck with a nice and high landing. I saw barely any mistakes. I though the 9 E score was very fair. I assume her D score will be higher for Worlds with the harder passes, and her E score might go down a tiny bit if she does that too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d score 14.7 or higher at Worlds either. Also if she does the 6.6 beam, hopefully like her 6.7 (2012 Olympic) bars routine (I assume she won’t do her ‘easy’ 6.3 routine), and her DTY, difficulty wise she’s right up there with Simone.
Also I heard nothing about Kharenkova’s 7.0 routine! Which was actually more like 6.8 but still!! She probably also wouldn’t get a 16.2 in international competition but whoa??! Definitely a beam contender.
Personally generally I think the Romanians do have really good form.. But Larisa on beam isn’t perfect. She always has bent legs on her bhses, takes steps on her tuck full, her layout is sort of whippy.. and I feel like often these are overlooked because of her extreme difficulty. I think this year at Euros she was already more harshly judged, and I feel like if the scoring at Worlds will be anything like YOG, Larisa will really need that huge D score to make up for the flaws she has. If she’s not perfectly on point, it might even be difficult for her to medal on beam too, with the Chinese girls (Bai Yawen, Shang Chunsong, Yao Jinnan) and the Russians (Maria Kharenkova, Aliya Mustafina), even her teammate Andreea Munteanu and probably some more who I’m forgetting.
But yeah. Beam finals will be STACKED this year. As will bars finals I’m pretty sure. SO EXCITED.
Just a nitpick: The AA at the Russian Cup is imbedded in Qualifications, not the Team Final. And as far as Mustafina’s floor routine in the EF goes, it was an inflated E score, but not necessarily within that week of competition. I think the judges were rewarding completed spins, especially her triple Y, and overlooking imperfect landings. She’s also much cleaner on her 1.5 twist to full pass; it’s only when she does doubles or triples that she gets really loose legged.
Well, seeing how you really appreciated Nabieva’s floor, here is another example of her exquisite dancing skill: http://instagram.com/p/s430j4PQn_