What Happened in Penza, Russia[]
Russian Cup:
This week saw lots of drama in Russia. Aliya Mustafina died on bars and did a new first pass, no dont get excited it was a full-in. This competiton for her gave me real Aliya in podium training vibes and i wasnt happy. Come on youre reigning olympic champ on Bars get a grip. Her beam wasnt connected at all however her vault in the AA was definately amanar potential. Its like when Gabby Douglas goes for the DTY on the high mat in Podium Training and youre like ooh shes gonna go for an Amanar, but then she never does. Aliya's efforts resulted in Third place AA. This also saw the major rise for Seda Tutkalyan where she hit all her beam routines (p.s she still has event finals to go but whatever) and hit her bars in the all around really nicely. Bars is where i feel she is most improved like Laurie hernandez from 2015-2016 on bars. This put her at stake to make that final spot for Russia seeming as Viktoria Komova is out. On that note Ksenia Afanasyeva popped off to Germany to have like a million surgeries all over her body. Im pretty sure the Russian gymnasts have there own personal doctor in Germany. But to be honest Ksenia can get through anything, like she competed at worlds and came second on floor with a failing kidney. Also missing was Maria Kharenkova, who was probably sent to germany to give Ksenia company. Wining the all around was Miss Melnikova. She just hit all routines apart from one, the uneven bars where she still scored a super high 14 which got me pretty confused. Also her DTY is just like Lauries which means good things. Nabs also came out of retirment which was a big surprise(not) i feel like she just wants to make history for the most comebacks in gymnastics but im cool with that. Her vault and bars were looking exceptional with the classic fall on beam. I love the trend going on twitter with hashtag nabsforrio! I wish....! Maria Paseka also made an appearance showing one good vault and a car crash in the event finals. Her amanar looked stunning however with everything good has to come a bad. In this case on her Cheng.