Russian national team for the 2019 season was announced

The Russian Ministry of Sports made us an early New Year’s present by publishing the official Russian national team roster early (last year, we only got to see the list in late January).

The official team roster is made at the end of December every year and is based on the previous year’s results. In addition, some of the gymnasts who are on the verge of making the team often get invited to a camp at the end of the year for the coaches to get another look at them. The list affects the funding of the gymnasts (those on the main team get more funding than those on the reserve team) and, usually, the camp invitations and the assignments. The main team always consists of the seniors who will get the bulk of the international assignments while the reserve team can also include a number of the promising juniors who’ll be able to start training with the seniors.

The federation can make changes to the list throughout the year, especially based on the results of the Russian Championships and the Russian Cup. For example, last year, Irina Alexeeva was added to the team in May replacing Natalia Kapitonova. In addition, the gymnasts who didn’t have good results might stop getting the camp invites despite being on the team – this happened to Seda Tutkhalian, Maria Kharenkova and Daria Spiridonova in 2018 and only Spiridonova managed to imrove enough to get a few international assignments and to secure a place on the 2019 national team.

The biggest changes from the last year are the absence of Viktoria Komova, even on the reserve team, despite the fact that her results in 2018 should have been enough to get her a team spot. This is likely the biggest indicator that she really retired (or that the national team is not interested in having her back). As I said above, Seda Tutkhalian and Maria Kharenkova did not get spots even on the reserve teams despite their recent improvements and being invited to a camp in November. They both spent 2018 recovering from injuries and didn’t have the best results but they are still training and preparing for the Russian Championships in March. It seems that the coaches aren’t giving Eleonora Afanasyeva any more chances either as her international assignments haven’t been successful last year. Daria Elizarova, though, is still hanging on and made the reserve team. Viktoria Trykina and Ksenia Kamkova advanced to the main team for the first time. Both turned senior in 2017 but only made the reserve national team last year and got a couple of international assignments. They are still not quite at the level of the top girls on the team but both are solid on vault and beam which are the team’s weaknesses, so it is nice to see that the coaches are not giving up on them. Hopefully, we will see the two of them more often this year.

Evidently, the strategy for the reserve team this year was to choose a lot of promising juniors, as out of the 11 people, five are juniors. This is likely due to the closeness of the Olympics and the first Junior World Championships that will be held in 2019. All the juniors on the reserve team are age-eligible for Tokyo and some of them might potentially be used to qualify individual spots for the Olympics, so it makes sense to start preparing them early. Ksenia Klimenko was the only new senior who made the main team.

A big piece of news on the coaching list is that Ksenia Afanasyeva is now officially one of the team choreographers. She started doing this job last year while still on the list as a gymnast.

On the men’s part, there were fewer changes. Kyrill Potapov isn’t on the roster anymore as he retired. The new seniors – Yuri Busse and Sergey Naidin are still on the reserve team and no juniors were added to the reserve team this year as they are not very likely to make an impact in 2020.

WAG main team

• Irina Alexeeva
• Liliia Akhaimova
• Elena Eremina
• Anastasiia Iliankova
• Ksenia Kamkova
• Ksenia Klimenko
• Angelina Melnikova
• Aliya Mustafina
• Maria Paseka
• Uliana Perebinosova
• Angelina Simakova
• Daria Spiridonova
• Viktoria Trykina
• Aleksandra Shchekoldina

WAG reserve team

• Olga Astafeva (junior)
• Daria Belousova
• Yana Vorona (junior)
• Elena Gerasimova (junior)
• Viktoriia Gorbatova
• Daria Elizarova
• Varvara Zubova
• Irina Komnova (junior)
• Valeria Saifulina
• Alina Stepanova
• Vladislava Urazova (junior)

MAG main team

• Denis Abliazin
• David Beliavskiy
• Artur Dalaloyan
• Sergey Eltsov
• Nikita Ignatyev
• Nikolai Kuksenkov
• Dmitrii Lankin
• Nikita Nagornyy
• Vladislav Poliashov
• Kirill Prokopev
• Alexey Rostov
• Maksim Sinichkin
• Ivan Stretovich
• Aleksandr Chicherov

MAG reserve team

• Viktor Britan
• Yuri Busse
• Daniil Kazachkov
• Viktor Kaliuzhin
• Aleksandr Kartsev
• Ilya Kibartas
• Grigorii Klimentev
• Andery Makolov
• Sergei Naidin
• Mikhail Khudchenko
• Ivan Shetakov
• Denis Yurov

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