Russian WAG juniors finished as the most decorated team at the first Junior Worlds in Gyor. In addition to winning team gold and all-around silver and gold, they won 6 medals in the event finals. Vladislava Urazova won gold on bars and bronze on vault, Viktoriia Listunova won gold on floor and silver on bars, and Elena Gerasimova won gold on beam and bronze on floor.
Urazova told R-Sport the gold medal on bars was her plan all along:
“This gold medal was according to the plan. I managed to get a higher difficulty score here because today, I connected the dismount to the previous element while I was not able to connect them on the first day. The World Championships were hard but still, I feel more happy than tired. I’m not disappointed that I placed third [on vault], but it could’ve been better. It just happened this way. At the warm-up, I managed to stick the vault but in the competition, they weren’t as successful.”
Viktoriia Listunova said that she’s having a hard time believing her success:
“I still can’t believe that I became a three-time champion. It’s the World Championships, after all. As a team, we were ready to fight but I didn’t expect to become the all-around champion. I was prepared to win floor, though. I can’t say that I did my floor perfectly today, the dancing elements had some issues, one turn, but the rest was fine. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that my routine was the most difficult, I did not depend on the other competitors. I just went out, did my thing, and left.”
On vault, Listunova explained that a sore hamstring limited her in training in addition to her DTY being quite new, so she wasn’t prepared enough for the final and ended up placing last:
“I haven’t had enough time to finish working on it in training. Unfortunately, I have hamstring issues, it hurts a bit and interferes with running a bit. I’m only doing this vault for the third time. Two twists is the most difficult vault for juniors. Generally, I’m happy that I did it but I need to work more on the technique.”
“I won a medal on bars for the first time because, mostly, I hadn’t been able to do bars well in competitions. Sometimes, I couldn’t manage my nerves, sometimes there were other reasons. Now, before the competition, we worked on the routine and changed it a bit. And now I can do bars more or less calmly. I’m fine with the fact that I’m a silver medalist and Vlada’s a champion. She deserved it.”
Elena Gerasimova had the highest difficulty in the beam final in addition to the second-highest execution, which allowed her to win by almost half a point. She said she plans on improving her bars and vault now to get them up to the level of her floor and beam:
“I had complete confidence in myself because I needed to do what I know. I wasn’t really thinking about the other competitors, I was thinking about myself and my work. As a result, I did everything successfully. The fact that I didn’t make two other medals did not affect me. The other girls on the team did a good job, they deserved their medals. I didn’t make finals on vault and bars because these are my weak events, I need to improve on them. At the moment, I’m very happy with my results but I need to improve my vault and upgrade on bars.”
Olga Bulgakova, the head coach of the junior team, told R-Sport she did not think that Russia would get five out of six possible gold medals at the competition:
“I did not expect that we would be able to win five out of six gold medals. The girls did a good job! I believed in them. At the moment, they’re great, I’m very happy with them. They worked really a lot, so, generally, this is how everything was supposed to be. I supposed that if they did everything, they would win medals. Although, I didn’t expect to have that many medals.”
“We had some knowledge of the Americans but we haven’t seen anyone else. The championships were very nervous. Last year, at the Junior European Championships, we went down to the second place and this really motivated us.”
Next week, Russian WAG juniors eligible for the Tokyo Olympics will go to Japan for a 20-day training camp with the senior team.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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