Rodionenko: If judging were objective, Melnikova could have won a medal

When a Russian gymnast misses out on a medal by less than 0.1, you just know Valentina Rodionenko will have things to say.  And she did.

Rodionenko claimed that the judging was not objective and the head judge on beam has been giving Russia low scores from the very first day:

“When we came to this competition, we had a goal to qualify to the Olympics in the team final because we know we don’t have a star that could fight for a [gold] medal. Melnikova had to be in the top-3 if the judging were objective”.

“The head of the judging panel on the beam was Chinese. She was holding us back from the very first day – both the team in the qualification and [the gymnasts] now. They still weren’t able to pull the Chinese up but she removed our girl [from the medal podium]. It’s surprising that the Belgian gymnast got a higher score than Melnikova – she has great bars but doesn’t have a beam or a floor routine, she’s barely walking”.

If Rodionenko actually followed gymnastics, she would know that Nina Derwael is the current silver European champion on beam and qualified to the beam final at Worlds which doesn’t exactly suggest a weak beam routine. Derwael indeed has low difficulty on vault and floor at the moment but not so low that you would classify it as “barely walking”. The comment fits the pattern, though. In 2017, when Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos took bronze in the all-around at the European Championships ahead of Elena Eremina, Rodionenko claimed that the gymnast came out of nowhere and didn’t have good bars or beam routines. Of course, De Jesus Dos Santos has one of the highest combined all-around difficulties in the world and is quite good on both bars and beam but, to some people, facts are just an inconvenience.

Rodionenko also claimed that the organizers showing what score each gymnast needed in the last rotation to take first place affected the judging as well:

“The judges see it, there are no impartial judges here, everyone represents their country. However they are shuffled, they stick to their beliefs. I can’t say that Angelina’s routine was amazing but she didn’t lose anything. Perhaps, the judges didn’t count some of her difficulty but her execution was fine”.

Of course, Melnikova lost the points exactly on execution – she had a step out of bounds on her first pass and a low landing on her last pass. In addition, if the coaches indeed thought the difficulty calculation was wrong, this is exactly what inquiries are for and Melnikova did not submit one.

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