In the all-around final, Angelina Melnikova managed to win her first individual medal at the World Championships. Last year, Melnikova finished 5th in the all-around final, only a tenth behind the second place. This year, while many of the main contenders for the medals had falls or big mistakes, Melnikova only had a problem on bars (due to a grip malfunction). At the European Games, Melnikova was excited to finally get a 13+ score on beam after revamping her routine. Yesterday, she got 14.0 and had the highest execution score of the day on beam, which made her almost as excited as winning the bronze medal:
“I’m incredibly happy, this medal means a lot to me. It will give me confidence for the future, because it’s my first. I’m really happy about my beam score, much more than any other event, because I’ve been working a lot on my beam routine. I’m happy I can show confidence on the event and I’m glad I can get such high scores.”
Melnikova feels like in the previous years, she was also a medal contender, but something never went quite right:
“I think I’m gradually growing. For some reason, it did not work out before. I’ve always had relatively difficult routines, but something just didn’t work out. I’m glad that it finally did. It’s my first individual medal from Worlds. It’s truly amazing. I felt really strong competition between the gymnasts. If you noticed, I was only a bit ahead the fourth and the fifth place. It was hard, but I knew more or less what I needed to do in order to be on the medal podium.”
On bars, after the grip malfunction, she was very afraid to fall:
“First, everything went well, but at the very end of the routine, my grip got set incorrectly and I touched the bar with my feet. I was afraid to do the dismount because I could not feel where I was in the air. But I’m glad I managed to do it without falling.”
Melnikova hopes to improve even more for the next year and plans on getting the Cheng vault, if her health will allow it.
She will compete in the bars final on Saturday and the floor final on Sunday.
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She’s working hard and it’s paying off. Hopefully this meet gives her full confidence going into next year! Her routines seemed fluid and confident finally.
Congrats and well deserve after all
The hard work
And the hate from Valentina
and her beam routine was beautiful! 🙂 I feel like she should have already gotten many more individual worlds medals.
I’m so happy for her, I really rooted for her! 🙂