Doha World Cup, the last installment of the Apparatus WC series, was postponed several times and finally scheduled for June 23-26. Some gymnasts will try to grab this last opportunity for Olympic qualification and those who have already qualified might go for competitive experience, since many international competitions have been canceled. According to Valentina Rodionenko, Russian gymnasts will skip the event:
“There’s no point for us to go there because all the qualification goals have been already achieved. And it would not be right to risk the athletes’ health unnecessarily on the eve of the Olympics”.
Russia has already qualified two extra spots for both WAG and MAG. Vladislav Poliashov might win the nominative qualification on parallel bars and could try going to Doha to secure his spot but if he doesn’t win, Russia will have an extra Olympic spot anyway, thanks to Aleksandr Kartsev’s performance at Euros. A non-nominative spot would actually be more beneficial for the federation, so it’s understandable that they’re not eager to spend resources on fighting for the nominative spot in Doha.
Rodionenko said that while Russian Olympic teams were already announced, things might still change depending on injuries:
“There might be changes on the team if any of the athletes will unfortunately have health issues. We still have time to decide who will be be on the team”.
She said that despite Dalaloyan’s rapid recovery, he is not expected to compete on all six events in Tokyo:
“Artur will still only be able to compete on four events and will skip floor and vault where the strain on legs and feet is high. We were very happy with Abliazin who can do three events – rings, floor, and vault”.
Rodionenko’s comment about Abliazin is interesting because he hasn’t done floor at competitions in a long time. Even before he broke both legs, Abliazin started to focus on just rings and floor. Post-injury, he competed only on rings at two Russian Championships and finally got back on vault at the Russian Cup last week. In a post-competition interview, he did not mention he intended to compete on floor in the near future.
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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