Angelina Melnikova told the media that she expected a better result in the AA and that the 16th place doesn’t reflect her abilities. She is right to be upset, since after Ragan had withdrawn from the final, Melnikova had the highest difficulty, higher by 0.5 than Morgan Hurd. And that is just the difficulty she hit in qualification where she did not get a full credit for her beam difficulty. However, in the final, compared to qualification, Melnikova lost 0.6 on bars, 0.2 on floor and 0.8 on vault (where she performed an FTY instead of a DTY) in addition to counting two falls and some other execution deductions.
Melnikova tried to explain what happened:
“Yes, I agree, this is not my [usual] result. Today, I couldn’t do the floor properly, again – I fell two times. I can’t explain why. Maybe, the quality of my performance was affected by the fact that I rolled my ankle two weeks ago. This surely affected my preparation for this competition. Here my leg didn’t both me, but, physically, I wasn’t well prepared.”
Melnikova said she’s pleased with her performance on bars and beam. It is not clear whether she only means the final (where she made a significant mistake on bars) or overall, as in qualifications she hit a great bars routine.
“At the same time, I’m pleased with how I performed on bars, and on beam, I was able to compete without falls, even though I’ve had falls on these apparatuses recently. Today, on beam, I really wasn’t able to hit my connections, this is why the difficulty was so low”.
After the final, Melnikova wrote on her Instagram the following:
“I know that there will be lots of comments about me now, bad-mouthing me and so one… Forgive me, I’m trying to do my job! But this year is really not going well for me, I’m honestly trying, but alas…
После финала Мельникова написала в своем инстаграме: I will continue training further, I think I just need to get through this. There are no ups without downs! Everyone makes mistakes. I am cursing myself and angry with myself no less than you are with me. Everyone learns from their mistakes! I’m not consoling myself, I just don’t want anyone to think that I don’t care. I also want everything to be always good, but there are winning streaks and then there are streaks of bad luck. My winning streak was in 2016 and it’s the turn of the steak of bad luck. And so many athletes hit the rock bottom and then rose to the highest levels! I’m not ok with what’s happening. But it would be easier to give up and I’m trying not to do that. Again, I’m sorry!”
Photo: Russian Federation of Artistic Gymnastics
