Prep Competition in Georgia

Some of the members of the Russian National Team are expected to compete in Batumi, Georgia on August 24th. Originally, it was announced, by Valentina Rodionenko, that seven women would be represented among which Aliya Mustafina, Viktoria Komova, and Ksenia Afanasyeva would be present. As expected, more trustworthy sources have since confirmed that we can neither expect Aliya or Ksenia at this competition. The latter was confirmed by Ksenia herself on her VK account, and Aliya confirmed her withdrawal from the meet to gymfan and friend, Olya Terenteva.  Angelina Melnikova has given us a list of candidates most likely to attend but it seems some girls are simply not ready to compete new programs, or are coming back from minor injuries and prefer to sit this out...so I think more changes can be expected. The list, for now, is: 

Batumi, Georgia is a resort-type city on the Black Sea

Maria Paseka
Maria Kharenkova
Evgenia Shelgunova

Viktoria Komova
Daria Spiridonova

Angelina Melnikova
Seda Tutkhalyan
Anastasia Dmitrieva

It's unknown why Aliya is not attending. My guess would be that she's "out of shape" for competition. She attended both the men's and women's summer vacation camps so if you think about it she hasn't been training seriously for a month!* And that's keeping in mind that she was only training at full strength for just 6 weeks before the Euro Games, so all in all I'd say she has a ways to go in building up the stamina she'll need to perform a competitive World's program. I'm not sure why Ksenia isn't going, though; history has shown that she and Valentina don't have the best communication record so it could be that she never planned to attend and Valentina was just talking to talk. But if so, it is strange that Ksenia waited so many days to shoot down the allegations. A further troubling sign is that she might also miss the Russian Cup and sounds very unsure about it. I hate to say it but this sounds like an injury.* 

The Georgia competition will not be livestreamed but we can possibly expect photos from RGF and a scoresheet. I think because a Big Four nation is present, someone there will think to capture some routines on video but we are at their mercy as to whether they upload anything to YouTube. It is my opinion that this competition is a testing ground for endurance and strength, not necessarily upgrades. The senior Russian WAG team has competed three times this summer: Euros, EuroGames, and Universiade. At the latter two meets, the selected members did not perform to the best of their efforts. Many chose to medal with downgraded routines and the execution was not where it will be come October. The girls who were sent to Euros, on the other hand, were pushed very hard by other nations and had to give it everything to earn those individual medals but, save Paseka, they haven't competed since April. So I think the Russian coaches just want all their girls to get prepared for the fall and this is the competition to ease everyone into the high season. I expect there will be some upgrades, especially from those who still have something to prove, just not new programs across all four apparatus. 

ICYMI: Paseka sprained her ankle after Universiade [where she also started having back pain], Ekaterina Kramarenko  underwent a surgery on her foot (precise location unknown) and is out for the immediate future, Maria Kharenkova has back problems (the report was vague) and is being treated accordingly, Anastasia Grishina is still recovering from a second ACL surgery and the pace is sluggish but she hopes to make an appearance at the Cup,  Alla Sosnitskaya resumed training one month ago but the after affects of her ligament tear are still being felt as she admits to training in pain (and is not mentioned for the upcoming meet), the status on Melnikova's hamstring injury from April is unknown but it appears to have healed since she is on the list for the Georgia competition. 

*The summer vacation camps held morning training but those were only 2- 2/12 hrs, one-third of the time a gymnast like Aliya normally spends in the gym. Most of the morning training was just basic conditioning, nothing serious. 

*UPDATE: Afan is injured. She's been absent from Round Lake for weeks.