2017 Gymnix: A Hopeful Future

Source: Alexandra Leask

The junior team sent to Montreal are part of the generation of Russian Hopes invested in by Svetlana Khorkina (among others). She spent several years making trips to big cities to put on workshops for girls aged 7-11 years of age to teach their coaches about standardized practices and give much needed professional tutoring on technique, form, and aesthetics. In recent years, she's attached an informal competition to some of these workshops and is personally responsible for the start of two youth tournaments in Russia. And of course any gymnast who is found to have potential is sent to her gym where she works (not as a coach), CSKA, which brings gymnasts one step closer to being noticed by national team staff. People like Khorkina, Alexei Nemov, even Nikita Nagorny, are trying to tackle the biggest threat to Russian artistic gymnastics- enrollment. Based on last week's performances I'm able to surmise a number of positive things about Russia's bid to equip the next generation with the champion mentality. Here are the major achievements the young'uns made last weekend: 

• They were the only team to not count a fall in TF! 
• And by not falling, won bronze for a fantastic team effort.
• They were the youngest, and definitely the tiniest, team competing but they made six out of eight finals, putting two in each final except vault.
• At thirteen years of age, Daria Belousova's AA would've placed her sixth at senior Nationals on Day 1 and third in AA on day 2. 
• This is the most pleasing beam team since the 2010 juniors. I love the risky mounts, the elegance with which they move, and the difficulty they already aspire towards. Three of them are 12 yet none has a d-score lower than 5.1. For comparison, Elena Eremina has the second highest d-score on the senior NT with 5.8. Daria Belousova, the oldest, is at 5.4 as is Strukova. C'mon people that's something to get excited about.
• They averaged a combined difficulty of 18.9. In comparison, USA averaged 21.175, Italy averaged 20.475, Japan averaged 19.066, and Canada could not be averaged in a similar fashion because their fourth member didn't compete all four events. They probably had the lowest difficulty of any team there but they still placed on the team podium because of good execution and even better consistency. 

I'm very pleased with how the girls held themselves and more importantly, it looks like they were enjoying the competitive and friendly environment of the arena. If we can nurture this generation not to be afraid of competition then we're headed toward a mentally stronger team in a not so distant future. Perhaps another turnaround is that we're sending juniors to Jesolo where they'll compete against more top teams and the number one ranked USA again. I don't know what's brought on this change in spirit from the Rod's but I approve it, as it serves to strengthen their mettle and place positive examples of hard work ethic in everyone's minds.