After winning the all-around title at the first Junior World Championships last month, Viktoriia Listunova continues to dominate the junior competition. This week, at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Baku, Listunova won four golds – in the team competition, all-around final, and vault and bars final. Tomorrow, she will have a chance to win two more medals in the beam and floor finals. On floor, she qualified first into the final. On beam, she finished seventh because of several mistakes during the qualification but if she repeats her beam routine from the all-around final, she is in the running for a medal.
At this competition, Listunova was joined by Irina Komnova and Yana Vorona. Her teammates from Worlds, Vladislava Urazova and Elena Gerasimova, went to a camp in Japan with the senior national team as they are most likely to contend for a place on the Olympic team next year out of the 2004-born Russian gymnasts. Komnova and Vorona will also turn senior next year and they were given a chance to show what they are capable of in Baku. Listunova, however, will only turn senior in 2021.
While she crushed the individual competition, Listunova told TeamRussia that the team competition was the most important one for her:
“We’re competing together as a team at a serious competition for the first time. For us, to win the team competition was the biggest goal and that’s our biggest goal at any competition that has a team event. We have achieved it and we are very happy.”
Listunova wasn’t quite happy with her performance during the qualifications because of a mistake on beam but feels like she was able to figure out what went wrong and to fix it. Despite winning by a very large margin, she wasn’t sure she would win until the very end:
“I guess the World Championships were the hardest competition for me. Although this one isn’t much easier, especially since I had two serious competitions in a row with a short break in between. Coming here, I was confident that I could win the all-around. I was worried about beam a bit because during yesterday’s performance, I made a lot of mistakes and got a low score, but today, I analyzed everything, thought it through and when I went out, I got a much higher score than yesterday. I was a bit worried before bars, when the previous score was delayed. Because what if something happens – bars is such an event where you need to keep an eye on it, so that it won’t be too dry or too wet, so it will hold you well. I got a higher score on vault than yesterday. It’s surprising because I’ve almost never gotten such scores [on vault] this season. Although I really did the vault better than yesterday.”
“I’m really happy that I won at this competition, I was preparing for it for so long, it has been a long and difficult way here. I had to fight my nerves before every event. I would talk to myself, I knew I needed to go out and show what I can do. That’s, generally, what happened. Although, I guess, the bars let me down a bit today. I only started believing that I won after I had seen the final results on the screen. Although I still don’t feel like a champion. Despite the three points difference with the second place, I couldn’t believe in my victory until the end. Anything can happen.”
She didn’t expect to win another gold on vault today:
“Honestly, I didn’t expect I would be able to win vault because after me, there were two competitors who had slightly more difficult vaults but they weren’t able to do them well. I was trying to set myself right because it’s an event final and I needed to vault better than usual. I really liked how today went for me and I hope that tomorrow will be great as well.”
“Regarding our competitors, they’re quite strong. For example, the Romanians were at Worlds last month. When we were preparing, we didn’t know which teams would go here. When we came to Baku, we realized that we needed to give a lot of effort to win.”
Yana Vorona was an alternate for Worlds last month and didn’t get to compete there. She won bronze in the all-around in Baku (behind Listunova and British Ondine Achampong. She fell on beam in the qualification and said that she tried to deal with her nerves before the competition:
“The wait before the competition was very nervous. Then you get into it and it’s not as nervous as before. Beam was the hardest for me because I made two mistake on it and to get myself together was… not exactly hard but I needed to force myself to do one more event, to get myself together and do it. After the third subdivision, when we had almost no competition left – the last subdivision was, frankly, weak – we realized that we’re likely first. Then we were told: girls, go put on your warm-ups, you’re most likely first. We’re our own competition. If we can get ourselves together and do [what we’re supposed to], then everything is fine.”
After winning the bronze in the all-around, Vorona said she was not upset even though her vault wasn’t as good as she wanted it to be:
“I’m not at all upset that I won bronze. Of course, I could’ve done better but I’m happy with the third place as well. Perhaps, the nerves affected the competition but I wanted to get onto the medal podium. I’m not completely happy because my vault was a bit worse than yesterday. I also could’ve done beam better, one of my connections wasn’t credited, but overall it went well.”
Irina Komnova won silver on bars, her best event where she also has a silver European medal from 2018. She said she was extremely nervous before this event in qualification:
“Before bars, before my routine, I was very anxious, I don’t know why. It’s considered to be my signature event, I guess, and I was so anxious before it, this was the first time.”
Komnova noted that the competition felt quite different because of all the athletes from different sports being hosted together in the village and remarked that normally, there are no late-night parties at gymnastics events:
“When we go to competitions with just gymnastics, there are no such parties like here, we don’t all live together. Here, we see other Russian athletes all the time. Yesterday, we were walking back with our medals and everyone was congratulating us, everyone who saw us, it was very nice.”
“We don’t go to the parties, though. We have practices at 8 am, we need to wake up early, so we’re advised not to go to parties.
Komnova said her idol is not an artistic gymnast but a rhythmic one – Dina Averina. who she “adores”. While she is eligible for the Tokyo Olympics, she thinks her best chance will likely be Paris:
“Well, we hope [to go to Tokyo]. But, probably, it’s better to plan for the 2024 Olympic Games”.
Photo: TeamRussia
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