National champion Angelina Simakova

Well, March was certainly a month for meets, was it not? I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the most crucial performances from Russian Championships, where Angelina Simakova won gold a few tenths ahead of Olympians Angelina Melnikova and Aliya Mustafina.

Following the meet, both Simakova and Melnikova were named to the European Championships team as the top all-arounders, while vault and bars winners Maria Paseka and Anastasiia Iliankova were named to the team as specialists, both with an incredibly likely chance to earn medals on their respective events.

In true Russian fashion, however, things are already shaking up on the Euros team with Mustafina taking the young Simakova’s place. Vault has consistently been an issue for Simakova over the past year, and though she at one point had a strong Rudi, growth and injuries have caused her to regress a bit. She got a zero for a crashed attempt at worlds last year, and this year she’s been playing around with other front entry vaults, like a handspring front pike full, but her success rate has been pretty low, and with misses in both the all-around final at Russian Championships and then in qualifications at the DTB Team Challenge, the federation is making the right decision to keep her home.

Mustafina, on the other hand, has looked excellent over the past few weeks. She’s not where she needs to be yet in terms of her difficulty, but knowing how she struggled on vault last year and seeing her bars look a bit labored, my expectations were based on what we saw from her at worlds, and so to see how many improvements she’s made just in her general ability to do gymnastics truly blew my mind.

Even without doing her Yurchenko double at nationals, Mustafina had the third-best score on the first day of competition and then she posted the highest all-around score in finals. Most notably, her vault looked a million times better than it did in 2018, with greater amplitude and tighter form, so you could tell the double was on its way.

When she unveiled the double at the world cup in Stuttgart just about a week after nationals, I was so impressed to see it looking more or less like it did pre-baby. Yes, the leg form is still there, but when she attempted the vault last year, it was terrifying; she didn’t have enough room to get it around, and it was honestly an ACL tear waiting to happen. Now, her body position on the landing is safe, and the only issues she has with it are the same issues she’s always had, so I think we can consider her pretty much fully back here.

Her bars, which were fine at worlds, look a bit tighter now compared to late last year. There are still the few super minor things that add up, like little ankle separations and slightly short handstands, but her endurance is much-improved and I think we could possibly see some upgrades by worlds, if not sooner. Her endurance is also getting there on floor, where she’s hoping to eventually compete both an arabian double front and tucked full-in within the same routine, though she’s gone back and forth between the two as her opening pass in her last few meets. Until she can get to that point, she has to end with the double full, which takes her routine’s execution down a bit, but for now it’s certainly better to take the execution hits than it would be to push the two more difficult opening passes and end up falling later on.

The only real struggle for Mustafina right now is beam. She’s looked a little tentative in all of the routines I’ve seen from her, falling at both world cups, and though she has a lot of nice pieces here and there, she needs to get to a point where she has one set routine that she doesn’t stray from, which would vastly improve her confidence and overall performance ability. At least she’s sticking to the back handspring to layout stepout for her acro series! Despite a fall there in event finals at nationals, the series is now pretty much a solid constant for her, which is what she needs while still figuring out how to best make the rest of her elements work for her.

Aside from vault, Simakova actually looked fantastic across all four days of competition. She’s not a natural bar worker, but she still does well enough there to put up solid scores if needed, and she even stuck her double front in her all-around final routine. She was mostly tidy and solid on beam, winning the gold and securing a spot in pretty much any team event coming up for what she can do there, and her floor is also one of the strongest in the country even though she’s not a particularly powerful floor worker, with a great balance between solid tumbling and clean dance.

Floor, typically the best event for Melnikova in recent years, was her Achilles heel in Penza, but we’ll chalk it up to being early in the season because all of her mistakes truly  just looked like the result of being tired. She had a few creative covers on some landings, especially with her front tuck through to double tuck, and in the all-around competition she crashed both her full-twisting double layout and then the double layout, but then she came back with a hit routine in the final to take the gold.

The rest of her performance was great throughout the entire week of competition here, though. Her DTY was perhaps a bit low, but she seemed confident on both bars and beam, affected by just a few minor issues on both. On beam, she debuted a Kochetkova, which was super exciting, and if she swapped out her ring elements, she might actually make herself more of an international contender here.

At the end of the weekend, Melnikova walked away with medals on all four events in addition to the all-around silver, and floor endurance issues aside, she looks incredible for this early point in the season so I’m hoping that means she’ll just keep getting better and better as the year goes on.

First-year senior Daria Belousova ended up fourth all-around at nationals, while veteran Daria Elizarova was fifth, and first-year senior Ksenia Klimenko was sixth.

Belousova is good on all four events, but just not a standout anywhere, though in a team competition like worlds later this year I can see her stepping into the kind of utility role Irina Alexeeva filled last year, especially if some of the top contenders get injured. I was most impressed with her tumbling on floor here, though mistakes in the final kept her from medaling, and she also has some pretty nice work on bars, where she has a Nabieva, and on beam…but again, she’s just not quite strong enough on any of these events to be a first-team option.

I actually found Elizarova quite strong in the all-around final, especially on beam, where she showed a solid punch front and big double tuck dismount. She hit all four events in the final, but missed out on apparatus medals, getting closest on beam, where she was super consistent all week.

Of all the new seniors this year, Klimenko, who won medals on bars and beam at last year’s Youth Olympic Games, came in as the “star” new senior, but I worried that everything that carried her at the junior level – namely, her consistency and clean form – wouldn’t exactly translate to the senior ranks and unfortunately, that seems to be the case so far.

She’s actually a much stronger gymnast than Belousova and Elizarova, both of whom finished above her, but as an all-arounder, Klimenko will never have a fighting chance with just a Yurchenko layout on vault. And though she still has pretty skills on bars, beam, and floor, she’s not a top gymnast in the country on any of these events just yet. She has potential across all three with great technique and gorgeous lines, but at this point in most careers, it’s time to move past “potential” and onto making those upgrades that will make her competitive.

The top gymnasts who competed here but not in the all-around were Paseka and Iliankova on vault and bars, respectively. The two took the gold medals on these events, so it was no surprise to see them named to the Euros team, especially after both continued on to have success at the Baku and Doha apparatus world cups following nationals.

Paseka, who took a year off after winning her world title in 2017 to have back surgery, brought her Amanar back at nationals, and it looked as good as ever, which is incredible considering the kind of surgery she had. She also competed a Lopez at nationals, a full twist down from the Cheng she upgraded to for the world cups, and though this is by far her weaker entry, it was still more than enough to help her to the title in Penza.

After a kind of lackluster year in 2018, I was thrilled to see Iliankova looking in top form again. Her bars sets at nationals were lovely, and she only keeps getting better with each week she’s competing. She’s competing a strong Shang, a lovely Tweddle to Ezhova, and a fluid Chow to Pak to van Leeuwen, making all three look effortless, though the dismount still looks like it’s taking up the last bit of her soul, so hopefully this is something that will come as naturally as the rest of her skills as she continues into the season.

Other notable names at nationals include the unstoppable Tatiana Nabieva in seventh, Aleksandra Shchekoldina back from the injury that caused her to miss her first senior season in eighth, first-year senior Anastasia Agafonova in ninth, 2014 worlds alternate Polina Fedorova in tenth, 2017 all-around champion Natalia Kapitonova in 11th, and 2016 Olympian Seda Tutkhalyan in 12th, while Elena Eremina, who like Paseka had back surgery last year, ended up 15th, fan favorite Varvara Zubova was 17th, and Lilia Akhaimova skipped the all-around final but took home the silver medal on floor.

I was most pleased with Agafonova, who showed lovely bar work, though she doesn’t really have the scores elsewhere to make her a top option, and I absolutely loved seeing Tutkhalyan back after she struggled so much over the past couple of years. She actually looked pretty decent on most events in qualifications, but she was a bit weak with several falls in the all-around competition, and she also fell on beam in that final, though she hit bars to finish sixth.

Nabieva, who won the bronze medal on vault and snarked on social media that she barely trains and yet is somehow still better than everyone else, isn’t really a serious contender at the moment, though having a spare DTY on the roster is always a good thing, and though Eremina’s scores were low, it was mostly due to her lack of difficulty and not to any real flaws in her performance.

Russia as a whole looks better now than they have going into almost any other competition in years, and they should handily take on the rest of Europe in Szczecin next month. I found the level of gymnastics at nationals to be about a billion percent stronger than we can typically expect at this time of the year, and was more than pleasantly surprised to come in expecting the usual splatfest only to see real quality work from about a dozen competitors who together make up an incredibly solid and deep national team.

Going into Euros two years ago, the situation was a bit dire, and it was no surprise to see the women taking home only two medals, but this year it’s looking like we could very well see two Russians on the all-around podium with the potential for additional medals on all four events.

In the men’s competition, reigning world all-around champion Artur Dalaloyan was truly out-of-sorts in qualifications, somehow finishing 17th, about ten points back from the score he earned to get his win in Doha, though he came back a week later to win the men’s title at the Stuttgart World Cup, increasing his score by eight points. Casual.

With Dalaloyan out of the picture, Nikita Nagornyy had an easy time taking the title, getting a more than six-point win with his two-day combined score to beat out up-and-comer Vladislav Poliashov, who took the silver, and four-time worlds team member Nikita Ignatyev, who won the bronze.

Nagornyy had a near-sweep at this competition, winning every apparatus title but floor, where he placed second behind Dmitrii Lankin, who also got the silver on p-bars. Dalaloyan got the silver on vault, Ignatyev medaled on rings, p-bars, and high bar, Denis Abliazin got the bronze on rings, and Oleg Stepko got the first Russian nationals medal of his career with a bronze on vault.

Also winning medals here were Kirill Prokopev with the bronze on floor and pommels, Sergei Eltsov with the silver on pommels, Ilya Kibartas with the silver on rings, and Ivan Stretovich with the bronze on high bar.

David Belyavskiy missed nationals due to an injury, but he’s still expected to head to Euros, where he hopes to compete four events. The rest of the team is still yet to be finalized, but it will almost certainly include Nagornyy, Dalaloyan, Lankin, and Abliazin, with Poliashov and Stretovich most likely to round out the final spot.

The fully translated women’s results are available here and the men’s are here.

Article by Lauren Hopkins