Angelina Melnikova went to the Olympics at only 16, the baby of the team, and became the veteran by 2021. She competed at every major competition for Russia this whole quad and is the only gymnast from the 2016 Russian team who’s still active. Vladislava Urazova and Viktoriia Listunova turning senior could, perhaps, mean for Melnikova to lose the leading position on the team. She indeed placed third behind them at the Russian Championships. But her first place in the qualification at the European Championships shows that she’s still the one to beat.
Melnikova is the reigning European Games AA champion and she has three European golds – two in the team competition and one on floor. However, her highest result in the all-around at Euros so far has been the bronze in 2019. Today, she will try to win the all-around title.
In addition to placing first in the all-around qualification, Melnikova also qualified to bars and floor finals in the first place and to the vault final in the second place. In an interview to MatchTV, Melnikova said her fall on beam was really upsetting but she’s happy with the rest of the events.
Q: You started the qualification on vault – how comfortable were you considering that you needed to do two vaults in order to make the final on this event?
A: Vault is the best option to start the competition, you can release all the adrenaline on this event and, of course, you have adrenaline and anxiety in the beginning. And vault and floor where you can go crazy and work it off, are exactly what’s needed. On the two other events, bars and beam, you have to stay calm which is very hard.
Q: On bars, Emma Slevin from Ireland competed before you and there was a delay. Did this pause throw you off?
A: The thing is that for tall girls, the bars are raised and we got “lucky” to have her compete before us. After the warm-up, they started to change the apparatus for her, then she had her own warm-up on the bars set up for her, she peeled off and landed on her neck and didn’t know whether she would do the routine or not. It was a bit of a stressful situation. And when the bars were being set up for her, it was also a bit worrying because initially, there’s a certain level of tension of the cables set up for every person. When it’s all being twisted and shaken before your go, you don’t know whether the apparatus will be the same as it was during the warm-up and you can’t warm-up and try it again.
Q: Did the settings change for the bars in the end?
A: Yes, everything was changed. And when I mounted the bars, I didn’t know what to expect. That’s why the first element ended up very slippery. It happened due to some sort of uncertainty, not understanding how the new settings of the apparatus would feel. After all, I can’t feel whether the bars are set well for me before the first element.
Q: Beam. First step and… a fall.
A: It was very upsetting. I don’t remember ever falling in the start of my routine. I worked on an upgraded beginning, I wanted to do it better but it ended up even worse. It’s upsetting, I expected to get a good score like the ones I’ve been getting lately.
Q: I suppose that even though your victory [in qualification] on bars was with some errors due to the settings of the apparatus the victory on floor should be unquestionable.
A: Yes, I’m happy with the floor. Of course, I’d like the end to be better but it was relatively clean even though I was nervous.
Q: Do you even take the music on floor into account or it’s more of a background?
A: Gymnastics on floor is going into more of a creative dance direction. But it’s hard to combine difficult choreography with just as difficult tumbling. Especially since there are also turns that we have to do and it’s not as easy as it seems from the outside.
Q: After placing first in the all-around and on two events in the qualification, will the nervousness go away? Have you realized that you’re well-prepared for the finals?
A: Well, I don’t know… nervousness… I haven’t been very nervous at competitions for a long while, it’s all fine now. I haven’t been very nervous today either, only before the floor a bit, because of the final. Because I knew that there would be a fight [to get into the AA final] and I couldn’t have afforded to fall.
Q: You all had almost a year and a half without international competitions. You only had the Russian Championships recently and that was all. How hard it is to get back to competitions after that?
A: Not hard. You really wait for competitions, you want to compete after such a break, you want to go out and compete. The waiting is more exhausting than coming back.
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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