The Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation has announced today that Artur Dalaloyan will skip the upcoming European Championships due to the injury he sustained at the last verification before the competition. He will be replaced by Kirill Prokopev.
According to Valentina Rodionenko, Dalaloyan has already had surgery and is expected to recover by the time of the Olympics:
“Unfortunately, Artur got injured during the verification, he has a partial Achilles ligament tear. At the European Championships, Artur will be replaced by Kirill Prokopev. Today the athlete had surgery which was successful. The doctors are optimistic, they say they full recovery will take three months. We still count on him.”
The replacement by Prokopev is interesting as he’s normally not among the top Russia all-arounders. At the recent nationals, he finished 7th, after Dalaloyan, Kartsev, Belyavskiy, Ignatyev, Kuliak, and Kaliuzhin. Kaliuzhin and Kuliak do not have active FIG licenses at the moment, but Ignatyev does. Perhaps, Prokopev was able to improve significantly in the month since the nationals.
