Massilia Elite News and videos

Russia won the team event by quite a margin, helped by the fact that China only submitted 2/3 bars routines and consequently placed last. The reason for this was that the visa for the lovely Mei Jie was not received in time. You would imagine Lou Nina could jump up and do an extremely basic routine but obviously not.

Evgeniya Shelgunova won the AA, a nice boost for her entering her senior year shortly. When I think of her I think of the proverb 'Slow and steady wins the race'. I do see her possibly taking AA spots from the more fragile and headcase type gymnasts Russia have at the moment, not to mention how many injuries they are dealing with. We'll see. She really needs work on her form though, and she did fall in event finals. Hmmm.

Chen Siyi won bars. She and several others including Viktoria Kuzmina and Evgeniya Shelgunova fell on beam, whose title went to Gabriella Douglas of Canada. Floor was won by Maria Kharenkova, and vault by Emma Larson of Sweden. Sabrina Gill of Canada placed third on vault and Heaven Latimer also of Canada placed second on floor. Viktoria Kuzmina salvaged bronze on beam with her fall and second on bars.

Victoria Moors unleashed a new floor routine. Either she is pacing herself for the upcoming world cup events or maybe nursing a small injury since she had trouble with her double double in warmup and watered down. Watered down means a double layout opening pass and a double twist, so still very impressive. The choreo is really nice, she has tons of expression. There was dissapointment with Maria Kharenkova who seemed lacklustre, has gotten weaker on bars which she already needed to improve on and did not perform her signature turn on beam. Again, possibly injured slightly or just dealing with growth. Viktoria Kuzmina certainly stepped up to the plate and performed strongly however. There was great excitement over the bar routine of Ida Gustaffson of Swededn, though she fell on her Jaeger in bars finals. Gabriella Douglas also impressed, with an attempted quad turn into double turn combo on floor (which was a triple to double in the end- still awesome) and some lovely work on beam.

I can't embed videos because it takes blogger a while to catch up with recent uploads. But the channel is here. I recommend watching the Chinese routines after the Russian ones. Shelgunova's Pak, double layout and shap are very poor form-wise, but Kuzmina's and Kharenkova's routines need huge amounts of work too.