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

Floor music wish

There's big variety in floor music these days, plenty of classical, traditional music from the gymnast's country and just about everything in between. But sometimes I come across a piece or style of music that has never been represented, at least not on the international stage- and has the potential to be great and capture people's attention.

For me, it is Irish music. Ireland has a huge musical tradition but it's not represented in international gymnastics at all really, though that's hardly a surprise given that WAG here is extremely limited and sent only a few gymnasts to Euros and no further. Anyway, it's something I'd like to see. Irish music is extremely fast and even the slower pieces would be good for hitting elements in time to it. Irish dance which is accompanied always to this style of music (there are a few speeds though, some very fast for each different group of dances) is always exactly in time, so it's not hard to work with it. I would know, although I gave up gymnastics pretty quick I stuck with Irish dancing for 6 years :)

It might suprise you that both of these routines are using Irish music as a base. But neither are particularly great for me, much as I love Raducan she isn't really working to this music. And Deliana's was pure dirge! There's an awful lot better than that, and a lot of choreo that would go well with it.

So, here's the music I would most love to see paired with a floor routine:

You could see some beautiful choreo corresponding to the uplifts in that I think. Any choices of music which you think would be awesome but are seriously underrepresented?

Some of my favourite routines of all time

Also love her floor but her beam edges it out so will leave it as one per gymnast.

LOVE this. My favourite floor..of all time. So underrated and unheard of, still not sure why she dropped off the radar with a killer floor like this.

I love me a beautiful artistic floor routine. These two I would rate higher than far more famous ones.

This FX was wayyy ahead of its time and should have beat Shushunova at least if not Silivas. Just amazing.

The greatest music-choreography combination! This blows 'cutesy barf Bela era' routines out of the water, gutted she got rid of it for Atlanta.

Unreal. She often OVERrotated this too, don't think anyone beats her in pure power stakes.

She has a straighter form on her amanar here than she does now. It is STILL incredible and the best amanar performed by anyone but she is just straighter here. The better landing than her 2012 landings helps too. Love this girl.

I don't care if she has slightly bent knees on her transitions. Let's just see it as the marvellous bar routine that it was, so incredibly difficult and GREAT form. All the more spectacular given that she was most likely 12 here. Her beam is worth a look too!

Such. beautiful.bars

I could go on forever, think I'll stop here.