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

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.