Simakova wins all-around at the Russian Championships

The all-around final at the Russian Championships seemed to be heading for some surprising results with the leader, Angelina Simakova, falling on vault and the second place qualifier, Angelina Melnikova, having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad floor routine. However, at the end, even though Aliya Mustafina who qualified in third had a cleaner day of the tree, she was not quite able to surpass either of Gelyas. Melnikova was doing quite well until the last rotation where she had three falls on floor. There was a mishap with her music which could have affected her. However, Viktoria Komova who commentated the final together with Emin Garibov, said that Melnikova’s been suffering from periosteum pain due to doing a lot of hard surface landings while preparing for competitions. Mustafina has unveiled her new gorgeous floor routine, with four tumbling passes, which was choreographed by Ksenia Afanasyeva. Afanasyeva is also currently choreographing a new floor routine for Melnikova but we will likely only see the new routine closer to the World Championships. The top three are leaving for Stuttgart right after the nationals: Mustafina will compete at the World Cup, while Melnikova and Simakovawill be on the Russian team for the DTB Pokal Challenge. Klimenko and Belousova are also slated to compete on the team but Elizarova might have made the case for including her instead of Klimenko.

Klimenko, the junior star of last year, is having some trouble transitioning to the senior stage as she is currently unable to upgrade on vault and is doing just a Yurchenko layout. According to Komova, she’s been training a FTY for a while now but, for some reason, just cannot seem to learn it.

The all-around results at the Russian Championships are the sum of two days (qualification and the final). Simakova won the competition with 107.897, Melnikova took silver with 107.463 and Mustafina won bronze with 107.398. The fourth, fifth and sixth places also didn’t change compared to qualification with Belousova, Elizarova, and Klimenko finishing in the top-6.

Tatiana Nabieva finished in 7th place overall, higher than many national team members, so, perhaps, this will finally ensure she gets a national team spot. Aleksandra Shchekoldina was able to do much better in the final than in the qualification, improving her results by almost three points. According to Garibov, Shchekoldina will join Maria Paseka and Anastasia Iliankova in trying to qualify to Tokyo via apparatus World Cups. All three are scheduled to compete in Baku next week. Iliankova also did an exhibition bars routine during the all-around final in order to get more competition experience.

Elena Eremina is not yet back to her former level of difficulty and finished 15th overall. According to Komova, Eremina has been struggling with a growth spurt and puberty which affected her training in addition to the recovery after the back surgery.

Full results

The competition will continue tomorrow with the MAG all-around final. The live stream will start at 15:00 local time (7 am ET).

Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation

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