Yesterday Maria Paseka took bronze in the vault final at the Universiade after performing her Amanar and Lopez with significant mistakes. Paseka was first on vault in qualification and was a clear favorite to win the final with a 0.4 advantage in the D score over Black and Rogers. Paseka is on the preliminary Russian Worlds team – she would compete in Montreal only on vault. However, her chances for the Worlds spot might be in danger as Valentina Rodionenko said to R-Sport that the team management is not happy with Paseka’s results in this season:
“We are very upset with Paseka, we have a lot of questions for her. It’s just awful. We don’t know what’s going on with her. She seems to be training, to be ready, but then she goes to compete and… The same happened to her at the Euros, the same happened now. We’ve always placed our bets on her on vault.”
On the other hand, Paseka has proved Rodionenkos wrong before. In 2015, she was not sent to Euros because the team management was not quite happy with her performance and they chose to send Alla Sosnitstkaya instead. Sosnitskaya got injured in podium training and Paseka was urgently flown in Montpellier. Despite missing the podium training, Paseka qualified to the vault final and ultimately won gold there.
