With the conclusion of the all-around final at the Russian Cup, Valentina Rodionenko announced the Olympic teams, and following the event finals, she added the names of the individual gymnasts that are the frontrunners for the extra spots. The MAG team, according to Rodionenko, will include Nikita Nagorny, David Belyavskiy, Artur Dalaloyan, and Aleksandr Kartsev. For WAG, the three places are clear – Angelina Melnikova, Viktoria Listunova, and Vladislava Urazova – and the fourth place is being decided between Elena Gerasimova and Lilia Akhaimova.
Russia has two extra spots each for MAG and WAG. Rodionenko said:
“Poliashov and Abliazin are competing for the two individual spots. For girls, according to our calculations, Gerasimova should get the fourth spot and Akhaimova and Ilyankova will go as individuals. There won’t be any other names. We’ll decide later how the athletes will be allocated, we have enough time for that.”
Rodionenko commented that the gymnasts were not expected to do their best at the Russian Cup:
“Some things worked out, some didn’t. We didn’t not have a goal for them to shine today, they’re not supposed to be at their peak now. They showed their routines, there were some mistakes, we’ll draw conclusions from it. They made mistake on beam, we need to do something, to change the routines. But the most important thing is that the difficulty they got to, they routines they’re doing are the ones we pick to focus on and prepare for the Olympics.”
For women, choosing between Gerasimova and Akhaimova is indeed quite hard. It’s very possible that whoever is chosen ends up sitting out the team final because the top three gymnasts can post high scores on all four events. Gerasimova’s only contribution would be on beam. She is capable of high scores on that event and even when she falls, she usually posts a decent score. However, at the moment, she is only more consistent than Melnikova on the event and if Melnikova figures things out on beam, Gerasimova’s routine will be unnecessary. Akhaimova has higher difficulty than any of the top three on vault and is capable of outscoring Urazova on floor. She also has experience – she went to several senior competitions and made finals at both European and World Championships in the past, unlike Gerasimova whose only senior international event was Euros this year. But she’s been struggling with consistency and did not have even one good routine on floor at this competition. Either could be a valid choice for the four-person team and I expect the national team staff will wait until the last possible minute to make the decision.
For men, Abliazin is an obvious choice for an individual spot because of his results on both rings and vault. At the Russian Championships in March he only did rings and was still not allowed to do vault. At the Russian Cup, he did three routines on rings and got high scores every time, proving he’s a good candidate for the extra spot. Abliazin said:
“We’ve recovered vault from scratch, after such an injury. I hoped to do rings well. There was a lot of work done, routines kept changing, elements kept changing. I did rings for three days – in qualification, yesterday [during AA final] as an exhibition, and today. And with every day, my rings were better and better, so I think I did my maximum.”
Poliashov had some issues at the Russian Cup but his spot is very likely to be nominative – this will be clear after the last World Cup of the series at the end of the month in Doha. If Poliashov doesn’t get a nominative spot, the coaches might opt to swap him for Ivan Stretovich who won is recovering from a wrist injury. Stretovich won floor and high bar gold at the competition and he still has some time to progress further. Stretovich said in an interview:
“I had a right wrist injury. I had surgery, they stitched two ligaments together. It wasn’t so long again, in December, so I managed to spend only two proper camps with the national team. During the first camp, I was just getting back into it and at the second camp, I was already doing routines. So, with how much time we were able to spend on it, we are showing everything we were able to do. I’m happy with it.”
David Belyavskiy only did four events at the Russian Cup and won gold on pommel horse and parallel bars. He will compete in the all-around at the Olympics but opted to skip two leg events here because of health issues. His injuries and Dalaloyan’s Achilles tear make having them on the same team a bit of a risky choice. However, Dalaloyan is recovering rapidly. He was able to compete on four events and did routines without dismounts at the Russian Cup but plans on restarting tumbling once he gets back to Round Lake next week:
“I’m very happy and proud that I was able to prepare in such a short time. And prepare quite well, actually, I did my routines at a very high level, except for the fact that I didn’t do dismounts because the doctors haven’t permitted it yet. After coming back to Moscow, I will start jumping off the apparatuses, I’ll start jumping on the trampoline, I’ll start doing light tumbling elements, the condition of my ankle allows for it already. What I was very happy about was that in the week of being here I felt a lot of progress in my recovery.”
The gymnasts now will have a week off before going back to Round Lake on June 20th for the final pre-Olympic camp. They will have a series of verification competitions at Round Lake and we will likely to find out the finalized teams and the alternates only in July.
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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