Floor Routines of the Year, 1976- 2012

 Simply, the one routine per year that stands out from all the rest.

2012- Eythora Thorsdottir, Netherlands, Junior Euros

Yes I've mentioned her quite a lot. Anyway, here she is on floor in all her glory- perfect precise form, beautiful graceful dance. I can't find myself to care that her difficulty is low. Just a masterpeice. And yes it does beat the various Olympic routines, for me. Her main contenders were Aliya Mustafina, Mai Murakami and Larisa Iordache.

2011- Mariya Livchikova, Ukraine, World Cup- Ghent

Just gorgeous. That double front is truly exceptional. Love her flair and form.

Top 10: Floor routines

Not individual floor workers, just routines. I've never been the type of fan who judges every floor by 80's soviet routines, I would often much prefer to watch routines that were way ahead of their time, broke the mould in some way, extraordinarily powerful or energetic in movement or just a plain triumphant routine for somebody who was written off by most. In this list, there's about 7 routines that will always feature in a top 10 for me.


10. Andrea Raducan, ROM 1999 Worlds EF, Tianjin

One of my favourite Romanian floor workers, Andreea combined great tumbling with brilliant dance and a real sparkle selling the entire floor exercise. It is the dance that puts it ahead of so many other Romanian floor exercises for me.

9. Dominque Dawes, USA 1992 Dodge Challenge

Her best performance of this routine. Incredibly energetic and really fun to watch, with a great back-to-back tumbling pass in the middle.


8. Deliana Vodenitcharova, BUL, 1988 Olympics TF

So much great Irish music, and this dirge was chosen. Sigh. This routine is so ahead of its time that it would still have a high start value today...24 years later. Excellent tumbling with some nice moves in between. Totally robbed as she always received a much lower score for this than the big names with their weaker tumbling.


7. Olga Strazheva, USSR, 1989 WorldsAA

The modern dance masterpiece, a total antithesis to the usual balletic Soviet floor routines. Her tumbling really is secondary to the dance, though it's not bad at all. She performed this with such ease- every movement was so thought out and so in tune with the music. Just amazing.

6. Chellsie Memmel, USA 2008 Olympic Trials

This is one of the most phenomenal floor exercises, and one I keep coming back to. The combination of the 5 very difficult tumbling pass, her illusion sequence, her presentation at the end of the pass and the most planted double pike ever seen is magnificent, made all the better by the fact that Chellsie was written off prior to Trials due to her long string of injuries. A very triumphant fuck-you to those people, though of course- Chellsie who cemented her place in the team after her Trials performances was injured right before the games.


5. Cheng Fei, 2004 Olympics TF

Perfect combination. Chinese grace and presentation combined with raw power and great energy and sparkle in her dance. Superb choice of music too. Her failure to reproduce this for both Olympic event finals was a travesty.

4. Liubov Sheremeta, UKR, 1997 Worlds TF

Liubov was a better floor worker than Lilia in my opinion. Hard to choose between this and her 1996 routine- but this edges the win due to its quirky choreography. Such a performer with such exquisite tumbling.

3. Inga Shkarupa, UKR, 1999 Worlds TF

 One of the cleanest tumblers ever with such perfect form. This would be higher but I find her choreo a bit lacking. Love the unusual third pass and just about everything, such excellence!

2. Anna Myzdrikova, RUS, 2009 Worlds EF

The third pass is upsetting because she messes it up a bit and it costs her the gold medal. I chose this one because she was at her absolute greatest here, and the first and second exquisite passes are the best she's ever done them- check out the PERFECT double arabian. Unbelievable form, great chorepgraphy and relation to the music. A joy to watch.

1. Tatiana Groshkova, USSR, 1990 USA Vs USSR

There are a lot of Soviet masterpeices that I passed over- Baraksanova, Filatova etc. This one takes the crown not only because it contains beautiful expressive choreography in the typical balletic style but because it contains the most insane tumbling pass. The first pass is a double full-in- which is the same as a double-double except that both twists are in the first salto. It would automatically have a H rating next quad as that's what the double double has. Only one other has ever competed it- Alexis Brion, but Tatiana did it on a crap old floor. Just amazing, the entire routine.

Honourable mentions: Elena Produnova, Olga Roschupkina, Simona Amanar, Oana Ban, Ekaterina Lobaznyuk, Ludivine Furnon, Aurelia Dobre, Lavinia Milosovici, Daniela Silivas, Daiane Dos Santos, Oksana Omelianchik, Irina Baraksanova, Mattie Larson, Henrietta Onodi, Diana Dudeva, Olessia Dudnik, Natalia Laschenova, Tatiana Lyssenko, Kim Zmeskal, Ivana Hong, Viktoria Karpenko, Pang Panpan, Vera Kolesnikova, Maria Filatova, Natalia Frolova, Vanessa Atler, Victoria Moors

Late starters

Most elite gymnasts will be in fairly serious training by the age of 8 or 9 and usually start at the age of 6 or even before. This Olympics saw most of the Fierce Five stating that they started in Mommy and Me classes at the age of 2. Some gymnasts start years after the normal age and still manage to be wonderful on the elite stage, progressing far faster. Here are two of my favourites.

Ludivine Furnon

Ludivine was the springy sensation who snatched a bronze at the 1995 World Championships on floor (the same Worlds that Lilia Podkopayeva dominated). A very strong tumbler who performed the very rare double layout punchfront later in her career and a really expressive tumbler- Ludivine only started gymnastics at the age of 11 and had been training for less than 3 years when she became an elite and performed at the 1995 worlds. She was able to stay on top of her game for several years, performing strongly at the 1999 worlds in particular, and taking gold at the 2000 European Championships. At Euros she beat an incredibly strong field- probably one of the strongest floor line-ups ever- Produnova, Karpenko, Amanar, Raducan and Zamolodchikova! Unfortunately an injury took her out of serious contention for Sydney, where she only did bars. Her beam, while not sensational, was fairly strong and she showed her confidence and expressiveness on that apparatus too. She competed at smaller meets after she recovered, and has worked for Cirque Du Soleil in Vegas. Her worlds medal was France' first ever. It's just amazing to see someone get to that level so quickly, especially as France is not one of the top 4 countries.

Daiane Dos Santos

Daiane has had an incredibly long career, but just like Furnon, she started gymnastics at the age of 11. Unlike her though, it took Daiane much longer to reach the higher echelons of the sport, though she too comes from a country not renowned for huge depth. Daiane burst onto the world stage in 2003, with an emotional gold winning floor routine at Anaheim worlds. Unfortunately, though she won many minor titles, she made costly mistakes at major competitions and in the 2004 and 2008 Olympic floor finals and the 2012 Olympic prelims. Her 2003 worlds gold was a first for her country. Daiane stands as one of the greatest floor workers, and certainly the greatest tumbler. Though she is most known for her two tumbles named after her- the arabian double pike and the arabian double layout- the second of which has never been attempted by anyone else- she showed an astonishing variety in her tumbling, much more than any other gymnast. In her career she displayed more than 20 different tumbling passes and at the age of 29 was competing a full twisting double layout, double layout and arabian double tuck! Her music was always a crowd favourite during her peak period of 2003-2008 and her astonishing tumbles and sense of rthymn drew them in. Sadly her incredible height was often her downfall to major titles as it meant that landings were very hard to control, often stepping out of bounds. Daiane was fairly average on other events, but did manage to compete a front layout onto beam! The only video sees her falling on it after landing, but she did manage it with more success on other occassions. Despite her familiarity with missing out on titles, Daiane's legacy is one of oustanding talent and difficulty. Hopefully Rebeca Andrade, the young Brazilian junior who also gets incredible height on her tumbling can follow in her footsteps.

 

The best floor routine in London

Victoria Moors is a brilliant combination of beautiful dance AND power. Like Sarah Finnegan. Grishina could do with some of this difficulty to pep her beautiful routine up. Anyway, Moors is awesome here! This routine is out of either a 5.9 or a 6.0, which is of course competitive but not enough to clinch a gold probably. If she upgraded her turns that would work out well for her. As is stands she could easily medal with this, especially if Aly gets a lot of form deductions. I DO want Aly to be successful in her own right byt this floor routine deserves to beat her. Go Victoria! Plenty of comments stating she copied the routine from Jordyn, ignoring the fact Victoria has had this routine for years. And ignoring the fact that plenty of gymnasts have more than one floor pass in common- so what? Go Victoria!

The amazing Mai Murakami

Mai Murakami vies with McKayla Maroney for the coveted spot of my current favourite gymnast. Unfortunately though she is senior she has been left off the 2012 Japanese Olympic team, which really is devastating. However, Japan have a habit of sending older gymnasts so we can expect to see her as a major contender for 2016. Consistency is a little bit of an issue with her, can't think of any other reason they would count her out. She didn't have a great showing at Nationals this year but did manage to impress on floor, unfortunately not enough. Her difficulty is astounding, hopefully she can tie everything together and be super gymnast some time soon. 2013 worlds would be nice! I pray she will not peak too soon and miss 2016 Olympics. Anyway, here she is for anyone who hasn't heard of her.

Girl is shoooort. We are of course no stranger to tiny powerhouse gymnasts but Mai in particular has that extra quality of 'where did THAT come from?' as she doesn't have the obvious strength and stamina that more muscular gymnasts do. She can give them all a great run for their money.

Check out those awesome tumbling passes! And she has some even more impressive ones cooking...

WOW. Not landed on a competition mat of course, but it may be by now! She is apparently training a Produnova vault (handspring double front). This is an extremely rare vault as it takes such brute power to stand up. We have seen Yamilet Pena land this to her back over and over again, receiving much lower scores than if she landed a clean DTY. Yet Mai looks to be very capable of it. I would put her ahead of any other current powerful gymnasts to land that vault.There IS footage of her training  a layout-1 and a half twist vault however. I would and I'm sure everyone would, love to see her land both.

Dance moves have not been neglected in place of pure power either. Here she is performing a beautiful quadruple spin on beam! Betty Okino would be proud. This has since been bettered by a quintuple spin by a teammate, but nevertheless just so impressive.

Unfortunately footage of her beam and bars show weak spots. Her bars are somewhat underwhelming and she just doesn't shine on them. Her beam shows impressive skills but she has difficulty with steadiness. We can of course speculate she will be able to get her bars to a decent clean standard, Japanese bars as a nation tend to have a lovely swing and score pretty well. Beam could be pretty easy to fix. I find it kind of odd to comment on a gymnast's looks BUT I have to say, she is SO CUTE! Especially that reaction when she completes the spin.

Go Mai! Looking forward to seeing her at Worlds.

Update: Apparently an elbow injury hindered her performance at Nationals. What a shame, with clean routines she absolutely would have threatened Wieber, Iordache, Komova and co. I'd also question how early Nationals were, start of April?? Could well be that if they were being held now, she would have performed much better. It will be very tough for her to hang around for the next quad, but there is great precedent in her country and not a huge amount of depth.