Shelgunova & Paseka Come Up Short

The final day of gymnastics at the Taipei Universiade held one final surprise for us fans. The easiest gold medal of this meet should have been the one Paseka was predicted to win in the vault final. But a leg locked landing on her amanar carried the after shocks of too much momentum and she went hurling face forward toward a near fall. It was scary enough that I stopped caring about her medal potential and wondered if there would be any implications of this, health wise, when she returned home. It was such an uncomfortable ACL- shattering kind of landing and though she affected to look unimpressed, that had to have put enormous pressure on her knees and ankles. Valentina Rodionenko released a statement to say that they were disappointed with her because it's the second time she's failed to win gold and that the same thing happened at Euros. Actually the same thing didn't happen at Euros. There, Masha was brought unto the team last minute after earlier wisdom chose to leave her at home so she could fully recover from her spinal treatments. She was never fit to be seen competing in Romania. In Taipei, one of her legs was visibly straight on landing thus the momentum of doing two and a half twists was not properly absorbed, taking away her ability to control her own power and sending her sprawling forward. Although I'm defending Masha against Valentina's criticism, it is just the kind of scary landing I always feared some of her nastier vaults might produce. Up to now she's always been lucky in that regard but in general I do believe she's mastered how to make the amanar a safe vault for her. Her second vault was the lopez and it had it's usual whip lash deductions in addition to landing off center and placing a foot out of bounds. She finished in third.

Angle 1. Ouch. 

Angle 2.  It's all for the best the computer blurred her face.

Paseka's ruinous vaults hardly stood out in a final with so many falls. It ended up being one of those finals where the podium winners were the survivors, if you will. Our other vault finalist was Lilia Akhaimova who had a powerful dty with a lunge back, one leg stepping out of bounds. She gets so much air time from her block I think her largest deductions will always come from her inability to control the landing. Time might be the only remedy. She scored a 14.3 with the .100 penalty and took the lead over Rogers after her first vault. Her second was a handspring piked front with half twist which had leg seperation on contact with the table but followed through with good form and a tiny step on landing. It proved more than enough to win a silver medal.

In the bars final we had Daria and Zhenya holding things down. Daria performed the same upgraded routine from the AA (5.7 D) but got away with sloppiness and short handstands to edge Kim Bui for the gold. It was an okayish routine but well below her standard. These days I'm wondering just what that standard might be. The Daria of last quad would've killed it in execution no matter what D-score she had but this girl is a shadow of her former self. The funny thing is, in 2016 I thought she was overrated because she failed to upgrade her bars for the Olympic year and had nothing else to justify her inclusion on the team. But for some reason I just wanna root for her in 2017 and I think it's because she's stayed on beam more times this year than the previous two combined. Her style isn't to attack and conquer but she's looking more settled and I'd like to believe her long awaited promise of becoming a UB/BB specialist might eventually happen. But she seems over it and her bars, of all things, has suffered the most noticeably. As for her gold medal, I did not agree with her beating Kim Bui on the basis of that e-score alone.Kim wasn't perfect either but I thought she handled her routine better.

Short handstands are one thing but this is juvenile form and I expect
better from her as a World Champion doing a simpler routine.
#MakeBarsGreatAgain

Shelgie had a good routine by her standards. Not as nice as the one in AA but still jaw dropping in terms of overall improvement. Her pace was slow and methodical but not in a good way. Seemed more like we were watching a training routine, not a competition performance. The thing is, I could tell she was trying to fix her errors as they were happening. So she'd take her time trying to get to the right angles for every skill, pause here and there to find her bearings, etc. It's like she understands what bars are now lol and she's learning how things need to be set up in order to do skills properly, but she's not confident enough in her own abilities to execute at that top Russian level. So proud of this one anyways. Not so proud of that DLO dismount.

Shelgie sighs in frustration at another 4th place finish. Dasha and
Maria win medals despite errors and Shelgie can't catch a break.
Um, she needs her prize money too judges!

Unfortunately I have to cancel my recap of beam finals because I can't locate any videos . It was impossible for me to watch it live yesterday and this is my punishment. Based on the scores, Daria and Zhenya didn't fall so that's the good news. The bad news is Shelgie was 4th again and I feel so gutted for her. The other bad news is that I can't locate a video of Daria Elizarova's floor final performance where she scored an 11.800 and I NEED to see it to believe it. What happened?

Lilia Akhaimova really earned herself some credit from the Rod's and Grebyonkin after winning a second medal- this time a bronze on floor- and it's the first time I think she's scored so well internationally. Bravo! This should guarantee we'll continue to see her next year at some lower level comps. But who knows what new things she'll show us that may warrant giving her a shot at a Euros...or perhaps something higher?

Congratulations to all the finalists and all the medal winners. At the end of the day, overscoring or underscoring, they made this Games one to remember and I thank them for their effort and gymnastics and hope everyone who goes to Montreal gets treated fairly at Worlds.

Here are the official results: