Valentina Rodionenko told TASS that the coaches decided to put Aliya Mustafina on floor in the qualifications instead of Angelina Simakova.
Simakova was originally supposed to do all-around along with Melnikova and Alexeeva but hurt her ankle while already in Qatar. Mustafina was training floor but did not expect to compete it and did not have a new routine ready so she ended up doing her 2014 floor routine in podium training. During a live stream on Instagram, she explained her choice, saying that it was the choreography she remembered best out of her past routines.
Rodionenko said:
“We decided to put Aliya on floor instead of Simakova who hurt her legs a bit during training. We decided to save Angelina a bit. Regarding Mustafina, she’s eager to compete and really wants to show her floor routine”.
Simakova will still compete on vault, since Mustafina currently isn’t training vault, and on bars where she is third in the lineup. Mustafina will be anchoring three of the four events. She doesn’t really have the strongest routines on any of them but Russia probably wants to bank on her star power and get slightly higher scores for her this way.
Russia will compete at 14:00 Doha time today, their subdivision will be shown on NBC live.
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