On the first day of the event finals, Lilia Akhaimova won gold on vault and Vladislava Urazova – on uneven bars.
For Akhaimova, this victory was especially significant. Vault and floor are the two events that can get her a spot at the Olympics but she’s been struggling with both at this competition. In order to get onto the four-person team, Akhaimova need to consistently score higher than at least one of the top three girls on these two events and add more to the team score that Elena Gerasimova’s beam score would. Theoretically, on vault, she has higher difficulty than Melnikova, Listunova, or Urazova and can outscore Urazova on floor. But she had mistakes on both events in the qualification and the all-around final. However, on the day of the event final, things finally came together for her and she got 14.766 for her first vault and 14.599 average for two vaults. Angelina Melnikova finished second with 14.349 for two vaults and Yulia Biryulya who’s not on the national team won bronze with 13.516. If Akhaimova will be able to get a good score in today’s floor final as well, this will be a big argument for putting her on the Olympic team.
Akhaimova said after the qualification:
“I know that I haven’t yet fulfilled my potential and I’m working towards it. My coach and I worked a lot on it. I’m very grateful to her, she really works with me day and night. With every day, we are trying to get closer to the quality of execution that I lack so much. The difficulty, generally, is already there. I still have something to work on floor but on the rest of the events, in general, I’m already doing my difficulty, I just need to perfect it all.”
On bars, Angelina Melnikova and Vladislava Urazova had the same difficulty and both had great routines. Urazova scored a bit more in execution and got 15.100, Melnikova finished in the second place with 15.066. Anastasia Ilyankova who’s trying to get an individual Olympic spot had good routines on all three days of the competition and finished third in the final with 14.933.
Melnikova got to a good level of consistency on three of her four events but has been struggling on beam this year. She said the fall in the all-around final at the Russian Cup that cost her gold will now force her to change the beam routine:
“I fell off the beam which gave me a great experience because my coach and I have been thinking for a while about changing the routine a bit. Today it was like the final straw, so we’re going to change something in the routine after all in order to do it more confidently. So, I’m extremely grateful for today.”
The top contenders for the Russian Olympic team will all compete in the event finals today. Listunova, Urazova, Melnikova, Gerasimova, and Akhaimova will all be in the beam final (Gerasimova was the leader in the qualification). Then all of them except for Gerasimova will compete on floor where Melnikova led the qualification.
If you missed any of the finals, you can watch the archived streams on the federation’s website. The last day of competition will also be streamed there. Fans outside of Russia will need to pay to access the stream (it is free for those in Russia). The cost of access to one final is $2.99 and the package for all finals costs $8.99.
June 12, MAG and WAG Event Final – 4 pm local time (GMT +7), 5 am ET, 2 am PT
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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Rooting for Lilia.
She’s really stepped up and there’s a strong case to send her to the Olympics. I was really surprised by her UB and Beam… she’s really improved her form in both.