Rodionenko: Mustafina will compete at Euros

In less than a month, Aliya Mustafina went from not making the Russian team for the European Championships to being Valentina Rodionenko’s darling again. Yesterday, she won gold at the Birmingham World Cup, with Riley McCusker taking the silver and Thais Fidelis finishing with a bronze. The WAG competitors generally had a bad day, with many falls across all events and Mustafina, despite a fall on beam, probably had the most consistent day out of the whole field. A week before that, she also competed quite well at the Stuttgart World Cup (but had a fall on beam as well which left her out of medals).

Valentina Rodionenko told R-Sport that these two competitions secured Mustafina a spot on the team for the European Championships which will start in two weeks in Szczecin:

“Mustafina did a great job, she won all-around in Birmingham, even though she made a mistake on beam again. So, she confirmed her right to go to Euros. She and Melnikova will compete in the all-around, in addition, Paseka and Iliankova are still on the team.”

Mustafina will replace Angelina Simakova, the reigning national champion. While Melnikova, Iliankova and Paseka had good international performances after the Russian Championships, Simakova didn’t have a good showing at the Stuttgart team challenge which likely sealed her fate. She was originally listed on the roster for the Tokyo World Cup and was replaced by Ksenia Klimenko when she originally made the Euros team, since the two competitions overlap. Perhaps, now Simakova can get her Tokyo assignment back as a consolation prize.

Rodionenko also confirmed that David Belyavskiy who was originally supposed to miss Euros will compete on four events:

“For the guys, the team is like this for now: Belyavskiy will compete on four events, all-arounders are Dalaloyan and Nagornyy. Then we have Lankin, Stretovich and then Abliazin and Poliashov who are competing for the sixth place. Poliashov performed well at two World Cups, he has an advantage. We’ll make the final decision at verifications, there will be two of those.”

Poliashov won two golds on parallel bars at World Cups and he’s a strong all-arounder but might not quite fit the team that is already deep on parallel bars. Abliazin has potential on rings and vault but so far has not yet recovered from his injuries and had a poor performance at the World Cups.

Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation

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