The Resurgence of Mariya Livchikova and News

I will always hold a soft spot for Ukrainians and wish them well. Mariya Livchikova is no different from their typical strain, with beautiful, original and difficult work on beam and floor, not to mention FABULOUS leaps and toepoint. Happily, recovery from injury aside, she appears to be among the most consistent of the bunch. Last year at Worlds Mariya tore her ACL. The team performed so badly that they only earned the right for a single spot in London. At the Test Event, Mariya was too injured to compete for the spot, which went to Natalia Kononenko. Happily, despite that massive strain of bad luck, Mariya is now back to her prime. Here is her glorious floor from a competition recently and her beam from the Grand Prix at Brno, at which she scored 15.250.

Double fronts seem to be easier to stick than other tumbles, but still, WOW. So tidy too.

This needs to be tweaked and in all world finals...just a better dismount and maybe some code whoring, some nice connections in the new code that she looks well capable of.

Aliya Mustafina has been named Russian Sportswoman of the year. Not only of course is this a great honour for her, it also bodes well for the state of artistic gymnastics as a whole in Russia- is is completely overwhelmed by rthymic, and even names like Khorkina and Nemov are by no means household names.

Videos are beginning to emerge from Voronin Cup. You can see some here. First is Evgeniya Shelgunova on vault, second is a girl I haven't heard of before, third is Anna Pavlova on beam, fourth is Mariya Livchikova on floor, next is Pavlova on bars and last is Anna Myzdrikova on beam- another old favourite, though she is past her best. The one I most want to see is Anna Dementyeva on beam, as apparently it was awesome. Update: It scored 15.6 in EF- need a video immediately! Aliya Mustafina and Viktoria Komova both qualified to the bars final first and second respectively, but neither actually competed- a late Olympians ball the night before! Demy won the senior AA, and Shelgunova the junior.
Edit: These are labelled as Voronin, but there is doubt that they all are. They ARE recent though.

The Toyota Invitiational has just taken place. Than Ti Phan Thanh of Vietnam won vault and placed second on beam. Mai Murakami was second on vault and second on floor (with a fall). Her vault difficulties were 5.8 and 5.4, a step up from the FTY she performed at Stuttgart. A good day for the veterans, Koko Tsurumi won floor and Rie Tanaka won bars (with a fall). Yu Minobe and Yuko Shintake were first and second on beam. Asuka Teramoto seems to be at least somewhat back on form, it seems that she was the alternate for beam, with a score that would have put her in second in the final.

Just at the mention of Anna Pavlova, here she is wearing a version of the USA TF leo! I think it looks great. This was taken at the recent Larisa Latynina Cup.

The beautiful but infuriating Ukrainians

Lilia Podkopayeva remains the only gymnast from Ukraine to fully realise her potential, aside of course from pre-Soviet breakup Ukrainian greats such as the record-breaking Larissa Latynina. As a national style, the beautiful long lines and unique combinations of the Ukrainians remains my favourite. Yet time after time, these gymnasts have crashed and burned when it counted or suffered due to mistakes of teammates in team finals. It is maddening!

 Here is the lovely Inga Shkarupa. Inga won numerous small floor titles and won Ukranian nationals AA more than once. With her team she came third in the 1999 worlds TF (belatedly, China were diaqualified) but did not compete in the Sydney Olympics due to a foot injury. Although floor is her strongest apparatus, she wasn't half bad at the others. Beautiful long lines and unique combinations on floor with great landings and tidy punchfronts so like the Myz, she was a victim of blatant underscoring as well as the Ukrainian plague of inconsistency.

Liubov Sheremeta was of course overshadowed by Lilipod. She had a floor routine that blew the latter's out of the water! Incredible tumbling, stamina AND choreo and form, just the whole package. She also had great bars and decent vault and beam, and suffered from underscoring.

Irina Krasnianska is the most infuriatingly inconsistent of them all. It boggles the mind why she was allowed compete her amazing german giant into tkatchev combination so many times when it caused her so many problems. 2008 Olympics, 2003 Worlds and just about every competition in between, Irina struggled and either fell or jumped off after making critical errors. The german giant combo is magnificent, but not worth so many falls. She DID manage to reap her potential on beam.

Viktoria Karpenko was a truly great all arounder and was a top contender for the doomed Sydney all-around.  Mistakes sadly cost her the title.

Like Sheremeta, Olga Roschupkina was a tiny powerhouse with great tumbling and expressiveness on floor. Again, not a specialist, she was decent all-around but had a lot of mistakes in Sydney on floor both in the AA and TF but knocked out a great routine in bars in EF.  She is a great example of someone with a stockier build performing beautiful gymnastics. Odd to see a beam routine with TWO side-somis in it, but they're so clean!

Alina Kozich, another strong AAer. Her vice in the AA (Athens) was a fall on her beam dismount, without which she would have and should have medalled. She left without any medals, a shame when you see her floor routine in particular. (The TF one was better but embeds too small) Those floor judges were on crack, Carly scored far higher than this as did Sveta. Oh and Cheng Fei was also screwed over on the same apparatus, much more famously than Kozich.

The great hope for Ukraine in this quad, Mariya Livchikova, will not be in London. Due to Ukraine's not-surprising-at-this-stage disastrous performance at Worlds, they could not qualify a team. The lovely Livchikova was injured and unable to be in contention for the single spot. Hopefully we will see her next year at Worlds better than she was at Euros this year.

I don't get it! They have the whole package. Lovely long lines, excellent form, flexibility, difficulty, great tumbling especially the notoriously difficult front tumbling, amazing choreography, artistry and expression...and yet over and over again, these gymnasts and others have achieved medals at minor competitions only to have Worlds and Olympics be a total splatfest. Somebody please fix Ukraine! No other country has ever had such potential before and be frustrated over and over again. I would put them ahead of the Russians in the 90's and 2000's in a heartbeat. Just AMAZING.

Other challengers for TF gold

I do expect USA to clinch TF gold but I can't say I would be devastated if they didn't. Dissapointed obviously as they really have the most potential by far and such great depth of athletes compared to other countries BUT as my country is not a contender at all, not having patriotic ties sure helps!

Now I really don't think Russia can take that gold from US. Komova appears stronger and better able to contend than she was last year. I also love the fact she appears much healthier looking and lost the waif look, yay! Mustafina, great to see her back. I would say she will have regained almost all of her previous difficulty by now, but she has lost the sharpness. Her twisting ability while never perfect, has deteriorated badly. Ponor on the other hand improved hers, so all is not yet lost for Aliya, I wouldn't count out a big improvement there but she will still be hurt from floor scoring and vault. If she competes an amanar I will cry. She was never able to land it perfectly, her legs were always locked and dodgy looking so the ACL wasn't a big surprise. But the pressure is on with USA fielding 5 amanars (this is using MY team of Wieber, Raisman, Ross, Douglas, Maroney. AND another with Price as alternate). Komova could have it beautiful in the air however and really help scoring. Bars of course a HUGE strong point. Floor is a little bit weaker. Grishina's is amazing, Komova and Musty at this point do not appear able to really outscore US on this, but we'll see.

Loving Romania's comback from basically nothing! It was great to see them victorious at Euro's. Hopefully that means they can really motivate themselves against an improved Russia and the dominant US in London. I see them fighting spectacularly for silver with Russia, couldn't call a winner at this point! Iordache is just fantastic, love her energetic and difficult floor- that double double looks great. Isbaza looks in great shape with lovely routines and Ponor's beam is spectacular. Her floor has improved, but I doubt they'd use her in TF on it. They will get high scores on floor and beam. their lacklustre to say the least bars and uncertain amount of Amanars/great DTY's might pull them down.

After such an amazing TF in 2008, China have lost their sparkle. They still obviously have strong points but it all looks a bit scrappy and as if they won't complement each other near as much as the 2008 team did. Beam and bars will no doubt be beautiful but other events just do not look as if they have high scoring potential. Which is a great shame after such a phenomenal performance but hey, they might pull a few surprises out of the bag.

I am devastated Ukraine will not field a team. United Kingdom on the other hand may well be able to place better than 5th. Hannah Whelan and Rebecca Tunney in particular are very strong competitiors, Pinches, Tweddle and Francis also looking very well. Tweddle's bar routine is astonishingly difficult, yet she seems to be hurt with her execution score. Hopefully she can tidy it up because if anyone deserves EF gold on bars, it's her.