A traditional winter competition – the Voronin Cup – will take place in Moscow on 18-20 of December. In the past, the competition, unfortunately, often had almost no spectators despite the free entrance, but this year, hopefully, it will change – both because of the special publicity that the federation has been doing and because this competition will see the long-awaited comeback of Viktoria Komova.
Komova, who started training last winter after taking almost a full year off, expects to compete all-around. Her routines were reportedly ready in August but she and her coach decided to take this comeback slow and did not want to compete at the Russian Cup, even on one apparatus.
In addition to Komova, there will be another big comeback – Tatiana Nabieva. Nabieva has already competed at the St Petersburg Championships and the Sokol Grand Prix but this will be a slightly bigger competition. Hopefully, her performance at the Voronin Cup will earn her a place on the national team again (she is currently on the reserve national team but hasn’t been invited to the Round Lake in a long time).
For now, there is still no full list of the participants, but the organizers said that people from 28 countries will participate, including USA, Switzerland, Japan, and Germany. Israel is listed as well and the Israeli MAG team will likely go to Moscow right from the training camp in Minsk where they are right now.
Several big names that have been announced as participants: Oksana Chusovitina, Daria Spiridonova, Angelina Melnikova, Nikita Nagornyy, Artur Dalaloyan, Dmitry Lankin, and Artur Davtyan. The website also lists Nikolai Kuksenkov as a competitor, but given that Kuksenkov has just spent a couple of week in a hospital for his shoulder injury, I doubt he will be participating.
While a Russian sports TV channel Match TV is listed as a partner of the competition, it is unlikely they will provide a stream. We will probably see some routines popping up on Youtube and some of the Russian fans promised to do live Instagram streams.
Artur Dalaloyan near the billboard advertising the Voronin Cup.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcMjQLHnz-0/?taken-by=real_artur
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Imo, the problem is that the competition is held on weekdays during working hours. I would totally go and watch it if it were on weekend or at least in the evenings on weekdays. But it’s held from Monday till Wednesday from 10 am till 6 pm when most people are working.
I’m not sure it’s just because of the weekdays. Lots of competitions in other countries are during the week and they still get sold out. For example, this summer, Israeli nationals were on a Tuesday and the arena was full. Two years before it was on a Wednesday, full as well.
I’m not arguing that artistic gymnastics is popular in Russia – alas, it’s not, but the schedule doesn’t make it easy for anyone to watch the meets.
If the Voronin Cup meets started at least at 18:00, I would be able to go and encourage my friends to go too, but with the schedule as it is, I don’t even have the opportunity:(
They need to stop using Moscow for that. Moscow isn’t that popular for sports. Go to other cities in Russia, they will get the crowds there.