Podium Training Exposes Doubts
We've had three days to see the girls prepare themselves for qualifications on Tuesday. Three days that gave us a fair opportunity to measure their state of preparation and physical fitness. Three days that relieved certain fears...and created new ones.
THE ARENA
"Lights are aimed directly onto the events so when the athletes flip, the light temporarily blinds them and they can't see the [white] floor come up." -GymCastic
Super! Just great! To see a picture of how bright the lights are click here. In the past athletes have complained about lighting problems and they've been fixed (like Glasgow) so hopefully the organizers listen to the concerns of the athletes and stop having everything thrown in shadows. Our girls can perform terribly all on their own, they don't need help lol.
TRAINING REGULATIONS
Starting this year, each country gets nine minutes on each apparatus during podium training. That gives each girl three minutes if her country is putting three up in quals. Don't worry, Valentina has already complained about how much she hates this. Paseka says that the time went by so fast they couldn't do everything that they hoped to test out:
MARIA PASEKA
She's here for vault and it's looked progressively better each day. Her vaults are being spotted (and still not landed very well) so unless she can pull a 2015 miracle out, I don't think her difficulty will guarantee her a gold medal. Steingruber (SUI), Carey (USA), Wang (CHN), and Olsen (CAN) also have terrific d-scores... but each of them present problems as well. Steingruber is also being spotted, has form issues, and deep landings, all of which indicates she's still regaining her former prowess. Carey is a nice vaulter but has a habit of losing control on the landings; she's looking improved nonetheless. Wang is competent but undynamic and sometimes under rotates. Olsen is the newest addition to this field with a slightly cleaner cheng than Paseka (with less height), but she isn't landing her amanar (like, at all). As for Paseka, her history of back pain and her current knee injury are serious afflictions, but take a look at the improvement:
The question is, is there enough time for her to improve to where she needs to be? I'm not holding my breath. Her other amanar attempt was super scary but I think her hand slipped on the block:
To me it seems like Paseka needs to do the cheng in qualifications. She needs to see if she can land it without Grebs and see how well it's going to score. I don't want her doing an ugly lopez in quals and thinking an ugly cheng is going to save her, only for her to crash it in the EF's or for it to score badly in execution with or without a fall. I feel she would have more confidence going into the finals knowing what she has to fix. It sucks that she's here with a fresh injury from Universiade because it's time to permanently add that cheng to her repertoire instead of miraculously whipping it out last minute. It's one thing I appreciate about the Americans, at least when it comes to vaulting: they don't change their arsenal, they just try to improve on the e-score. This has been a difficult year for Masha so we couldn't ask certain things of her, but going forward I hope a cheng and amanar will become her de facto vaults, which will give her time to actually master them. If I could give her advice it would be to do the most difficult vaults you can in quals, and do them the best you can in finals.
ELENA EREMINA
She hit all her routines in training but the jet lag is bringing everyone down. She looked tired in PT, especially on fx, but the other two days saw her best efforts. Remember there's a seven hour difference in time zones so when they left Moscow in the afternoon they arrived in Montreal, not at midnight, but in the evening and went straight to their first training. These days, my favorite thing about Elena is watching her cope. She's not the captain of the team nor does she carry the most intl experience, but you'd never guess it by how she behaves. She's tired but she carries on; some routines show she's lagging but they're not badly done even then. There's controversy regarding her vault: her dty was horrible but I've seen her do a decent double at both Euros and the Cup so I think it's a problem of consistency. She's definitely a weak vaulter, no doubt, but her dty's been crappy all year yet she manages from time to time to do nice ones so I think she's gonna go for it in the finals. She also did a great 1.5 and it would make sense for her to stick with that for quals- and hell, it'll probably outscore what she typically gets on a harder vault! She's added a split ring on beam to take her d-score back up to a 5.8 (after replacing the loso mount) and she's playing it safe (and smart) by not debuting the DLO on floor til it's truly ready. I love the angle Flogymnastics captured of her beam but GymCastic has great coverage of all the apparatus in the most gorgeous high definition. Hopefully she gets ample rest before her subdivision on Tuesday. I need to see her swinging like this by AA:
ANGELINA MELNIKOVA
Oy. It's like all the hellish things have combined to turn this into an experience she's sure to want to forget. She succumbed to an ankle injury the day before they left Moscow and it's looking like her first Worlds will be a mirror of Rio or the World Cup circuit she did in spring. She says she's regained her confidence- and the Russian Cup confirms that- but I can't deduce whether it's resignation or fatigue that I see upon her features as she crashed and burned in podium training. Valentina says she's fearful of her condition but "doesn't understand why" her training went so terribly especially since Angelina told them everything was alright. Wait, what? I can't believe a gymnast would downplay an injury to keep their position on a Worlds team. It's never happened before. Not gonna waste any words on this. Eventually someone will explain to that woman the correlation between injury and performance. Gelya, just...don't die out there.
Sigh I dunno guys. I really don't know.
ANASTASIA ILIANKOVA
Here are all the ways this team doesn't make sense: two girls got on the team despite being injured or recovering from injury- this was known to staff. Since then, Angelina has also gotten injured. Not her hamstring again, but a more Russian ailment...her ankle. That leaves Lena as our only healthy gymnast. Hmmm. Where is our travelling alternate you may wonder? It seems we have neglected to carry an alternate with us this year so while Melka perishes before our eyes and Paseka languishes between pain and numbness, Kharenkova is at home looking usable but abandoned. To add insult to it all, Iliankova isn't doing beam because the coaches think she needs to spare her back. I agree, her back should be spared, but aren't these the kind of considerations to make when deciding on a team? We're only putting two girls up on floor and beam so that two injured one event specialists can vie for the gold. Do they hate Kharenkova that much? Jeez.
Anyways.
Anyways, Nastia looks gorgeous in the snippets I've seen. She's a bars queen so you know a girl like that is still a favorite for the title no matter what her health status.
These were my thoughts on podium training. Who stood out to you, from Team Russia and beyond? If I was the head coach I'd have Kharenkova replace Melka because she looks burned out. I wanna give her a chance because I.Love.Her. and look how well Euros ended for her! But, like, this is Worlds and the pool of talent has deepened considerably so she needs to be better than she was in the Euros floor final- and she's not. And this time, it's not just a psychological barrier affecting her, she really is experiencing pain in her ankle so I don't wanna deprive her of something so special but she's the one pulling her weight the least. We all know no replacements are happening so I just hope for the best and that she morphs into Aliya and kills it. Thoughts?
Thank you for your blog. I feel nervous too!
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