The new Russian all-around champion Viktoria Listunova had to take a break from training in the beginning of the year due to COVID-19 and, as a result, was unable to do her full difficulty at the Russian Championships:
“It was emergency preparation for the Russian Championships, it took literally a month, because in the beginning of January, I got sick with coronavirus. We were preparing a different routine [on floor] but a couple of days before the competition we thought about it and decided to do lower difficulty but to be 100% confident, without errors, without flying out of bounds or anything.”
Listunova was comfortably leading after 5 events (the results counted both days of competition), but after Urazova’s 15.0 bars, the gap between the first and the second place started closing. Both Urazova and Listunova also had falls on beam, but Urazova managed to get a higher score there and before the last rotation, they were separated by less than 0.2. Listunova said it made her nervous before the last rotation:
“I tried not to pay attention to other competitors, but instead to go out and do what I trained. I managed to do everything except for beam, the most treacherous event. Unfortunately, I had a fall and that’s a one-point deduction. I was nervous before floor because I knew it had to be top-notch.”
Listunova will compete in all four event finals. Today’s competition starts at 12:00 local time (5am ET, 1am PT).
It will be streamed live on the federation’s website.
Full schedule of the competition can be found here.
For updates, follow Gymnovosti on Twitter.
