ICYMI

Another blogger's opinion on Glasgow Worlds (x)

Anastasia Dmitrieva placed fourth at the Arthur Gander Memorial. The competition, which honors former FIG President Gander, features women competing on three events and men competing on four. 

Strong in the half on block, but her hollow body line leaves her chest down on landing. Good height and adequate distance, though. 

I had hoped that she would show herself to be improved on this event in view of strong performances at Nationals and 4 Nations Torino. Great height and dynamic tumbling on the first three diagonals tell us she's comfortable with the harder skills... but there isn't a lot of patience when it comes to holding a landing. I would characterize this as a jittery routine, that's all. The good news is the tumbling form was mostly wonderful and her performance quality still shines through (how cute was her smile when the audience began clapping along?). 

The bad news is her dance skills- the technical, not the choreography- left much to be desired and the hardest skills (memmel and double-L turn) weren't done well. The memmel was severely short of 180, and the L-turn was incomplete. Since she's performed both better in the past, it was probably a one-off sort of mistake. She did very well on beam it seems, and if she hadn't counted the fall on floor (or near fall, rather) she might have been in second place! Here are the full results. 

From Daria Spiridonova we learn that the girls will take a mini vacation to Israel on the ninth of November, and that a complete vacation probably won't come until after the Olympics. She reiterated her pleasant surprise at the fourway golden tie and deftly dodged the question of whether all the girls deserved to be on the podium. She plans to add a new element and harder dismount on UB to give her a chance at going to Rio, but it will still be very hard for her to make the Olympic team, I think. (x)

Aliya Mustafina says she's unsure when she'll return to training but expects 3 months should see her complete recovery. (x)

The halls of CSKA were barely able to accommodate the hordes of children that came to an exhibition featuring Olympic greats, Alexei Nemov, Svetlana Khorkina, and Elena Shevchenko. For the third year running, aspiring gymnasts and their families got to recieve tutorials and one on one advice with the Olympians as well as demonstrations on every apparatus highlighting what good gymnastics should look like. Nemov says that inspiring these children is also inspiring the next European, World, and Olympic champions, since they are the next generation no matter what their present level is. (x)

Here is the list of participants for Elite Gym Massilia, starting Nov 20. Russia is sending Shelgunova, Melnikova, Skrypnik, and Kapitonova. At the conclusion of Worlds, Andrei Rodionenko gave an interview naming those three juniors as big hopes for next year. There's no mention of the extraordinary Sokova, but she had an elbow injury earlier this year that has perhaps taken her out of serious contention (in the Rodionenko's eyes).