The All-Around Champions

Angelina Melnikova 119.334 (60.067, 59.267)
Seda Tutkhalyan 114.933 (58.266, 56.667)
Maria Kharenkova 114.832 (58.266, 56.566)
Skrypnik and Spiridonova placed ahead of
Maria and Seda on day 2 but the podium
is determined by combined scores.These
are the top six combined winners.

1. Klimenko 112.867 (56.233, 56.634)
2. Schekoldina 111.733 (55.733, 56.0)
3. Zubova 110.334 (56.0, 54.334)

1. Iliankova 115.268 (57.867, 57.401)
2. Perebinosova 113.967 (57.310, 56.666)
3. Eremina 111.633 (55.0, 56.333)

Speaking after quals, Valentina was very happy with the return of Aliya, saying she performed with superb quality on beam and bars. She's also happy about Melka, Tut, and Kapi flourishing in the AA (she thinks Dasha Spiridonova had an "off day," lolz). 

After today's EF's, she said the takeaway was very positive. It seems they still consider Spiri a likely Euros team member since she won the UB final and ''confirmed her place as the best in the world on uneven bars." She's pleased that Aliya was able to get within a tenth of gold and reminds us that she doesn't have all her difficulty back but the main thing was that she competed successfully without hurting her operated knee. The girls gave her some fierce competition which will only benefit Aliya's competitive spirit. Paseka did not do so well with her vaults but nothing terrible has happened to her (health wise) to explain why she's not on the VT podium. She [finally!] praises Seda for her brilliant results on vault and bars and a good competition week for her in general. 

My own recap of the event finals will be posted after day 2. I unfortunately don't have the time to do a full recap of the senior AA but my feeling is that Melka was worthy of her second day scores. The only thing she has left to confirm is if she can perform the same way abroad. She has 24.9 in total AA difficulty but did not fulfill that potential (in D or E- score) in Stuttgart, so what I'm hoping to see between now and Rio is consistency.* It's the only thing that separates her from the likes of  Gabrielle Douglas or Margaret Nichols- their quality of performance doesn't waver from meet to meet so Melka's must not either. The same goes for Seda, Kapi, and Masha who round out Russia's all around depth; they too must maintain their maximum level and stop scoring whole points behind their qualification. The Americans have been so hard to uproot these past few years because you can see they don't consider excellence to be something that varies. It is their standard so it should be ours as well. We have the beauty, the technical execution, and finally the difficulty to beat them but we cannot underestimate the advantage of consistency. Anyways, putting preachiness aside, I'm supremely happy with how things are progressing and if our girls should place on the AA podium in Rio- I wouldn't have believed it possible last year!- then it would be a balm for having no World AA medalists since Aliya in 2013. Are you satisfied with the junior and senior AA results? If only Aliya had a definite spot on the Olympic team who would be your other four members?

*I recognize that Melka does have a sort of consistency in that she's rarely ever fallen as a junior, but this is the big league now! Last year, she won at Massilia basically because she sucked the least. This year she's won Nationals by outshining the rest. Huge difference.