European Games has the day off today, so I’m just coming in with a quick recap of the women’s team/AA competition at juniors worlds—there’s not a lot to say since WE COULDN’T SEE IT. Originating and organizing this big event and then making sure it’s pointless and impossible to care about…the gymnastics way. Girl, what are we even doing here? Live stream or it didn’t happen.
Especially because this one looked really exciting. Cool, fun mystery.
In the women’s team competition (and all-around), it was a glorious coronation for this generation of Russian juniors that—between Jesolo and junior worlds—has now racked up two victories over the US juniors in 2019 with its trio of future obsession-worthy stars Vladislava Urazova, Elena Gerasimova, and Viktoria Listunova. Valentina, don’t screw this up for us.
Whenever the US women lose a competition, it’s a headline (especially finishing 3rd as they did here), but finishing behind Russia did not come as much of a surprise since the Russian team started with a clear difficulty edge on the US and China and therefore held its fate in its own hands. Among the counting scores here (3-3-2 team format), Russia had a D-score advantage of 1.4 over both the US and China, meaning that Russia was always going to have to make errors to become vulnerable to anyone else. What’s truly newsworthy about this Russian team is that…they didn’t. Despite being all Russian and whatnot.
I had definitely tempered expectations with “OK, but when Russia falls three times on beam…” thoughts, but they didn’t have three falls on beam. They had maybe one we think? And were able to drop it. Russia also recorded the top 3 scores on bars and 3 of the top 4 scores on floor. It was a pretty dominant performance. Continue reading Junior Worlds – Day 2
