Larisa Queen of upgrades- AA champion?

Bellu and Bitang are long acknowledged as the ultimate masters at getting their team to peak at the exact right time, and they are right on track as usual. The upgrades shown at the friendly meet yesterday mean they are a threat not just to Russia, but USA also. The number one threat is Larisa. HOLY UPGRADES!

These are all assuming no missed connections of course. Edit: Beam and floor missed connections- these are the potential d-scores.

Floor D-score is now..6.7! 0.2 ahead of Aly Raisman. It relies on a tricky connection, but hey, she looks like she can potentially beat it out of the park. Previously it was 6.4

Beam is now..6.9! It was 6.6 earlier this year. This rivals Sarah Finnegan, who we are unlikely to see perform, so Larisa also has the highest beam D-score as well as floor. Both events are her forte.

Vault is now 6.5, amanar. She did not perform this at the meet, she did a DTY. It is pretty much a given she will throw the amanar in London. It's unlikely to score high, but still a good bit over a 15.

Bars shockingly are a 6.5, they were 6.1 earlier this year. Contrary to almost every Romanian in the last decade or so, Iordache has a good swing and style on bars. It is still her Achilles heel but with a D-score like she won't fall out of medal contention.

Her combined D-score is...26.6! The current highest listed is Gabby's, who has a 25.5, slightly more than a point behind. That's a huge lead. They are evenly matched on vault it appears, decent looking amanars. Larisa takes beam by a mile, and floor comfortably too. Gabby will make up for it on bars..but I highly doubt it will be enough if Larisa goes 4 for 4.

Komova has a combined total of 25.6, her amanar making a HUGE difference there as her floor is very weak and her beam isn't very high, though very decent at 6.3. If Gabby upgrades her bars she'll outstrip Vika of course, but word is no upgrades in USA camp, just fine tuning.

Jordyn's score ties with Gabby's, though hers is a but iffy given her beam connections that are slated for serious fixing in camp. It may go up slightly, or down.

It WAS very close but now Larisa has a commanding lead. I'm calling it now, she will be the AA champion. With that lead she can afford a few wobbles and steps. And yes I don't think her beam WILL get a 15.95, but that one had wobbles. If it's completely steady with nailed connections it could get very close to breaking 16, maybe a 15.7. Her floor really is spectacular, I do think she can get a 15.4 there, in and around that if she cleans up. It WILL reach 15.1 anyway, 15.4 possibly too generous, but she was a bit too energetic and bouncy in her landings at this meet. Vault..hard to tell. Not lower than a 15.5. Bars are of course very iffy, but the meet score seemed fair, 14.55. That gives her 61.15. I'm not actually sure how much we can see 'blatant home ground overscoring' because 11 of the judges are Olympics judges. Scores were fair but beam was a little high as mentioned..but then, they are spectacular routines. Actually watching this again, vault was way overscored! Bars seemed fair, floor decent, beam a bit too high and vault too high. However, this is assuming higher vaults in London which will help them out as a team.

Edit: There's big debate over whether the Cheng and Amanar (and another amanar??) will be done in London. Certainly it is extremely risky to do it for the first time in comp then. Bellu has repeatedly stated 'durr we need amanars' so I highly doubt we won't see any of the above. Sandra's vault would be far more in doubt than Iordache's- it was messy and low and a bit dangerous looking, the Mustafina still gets a respectable 6.1, 0.3 more than a DTY so she has a nice one to step down to if it proves too much for her. Iordache's amanar however does look safe, well rotated and competition ready. Romania are well known for pulling out all the stops in competition- I just cannot picture them using all DTY's against the might of USA's amanars. Anyway, if Iordache does a DTY in AA, she still has a 0.3 lead over Vika, her next challenger. Very very interesting!

More edit: Bit of dispute about the above D-scores of Iordache.

MOAR edit: Okay, found the d-scores at this meet and everything was watered down. Floor 6.3, bars 6.1 vault 5.8 (well we knew that one) and beam 6.7. It appears the d-scores we've been hearing about are her full potential and upgrades that she actually has. We'll just have to wait until prelims now!

OMG edit: Larisa's d-scores were down due to connections. If she hit them floor would have been 6.6 and beam would have been 6.8. Hmmmmm.