Anna Dementyeva wins Russian Championships

The All Around Medalists (photo: anna-pavlova.net)

Anna Dementyeva won the all around at the Russian Championships. Anna Pavlova won the silver medal (put her on the national team!) and Alena Polyan won the bronze. New seniors Yulia Inshina and Yulia Belokobilskaya rounded out the top five.

Viktoria Komova competed and received a huge 16.7 on uneven bars, but presumably had falls on beam and floor, only scoring 13.75 and 12.9. Despite this, she would have still won the all around with a 14.75 on vault (this is lower than Nabieva’s score, so it wouldn’t have been hard), but from what I understand she balked on two attempts and recieved a 0. She is still competing in the team finals on Friday and bars and beam finals over the weekend, so hopefully she will be able to shine there, because 35th all around does not reflect her abilities. She is also still recovering from a sprained ankle she sustained in late December from tripping in the gym.

This is a big title for Dementyeva. It looks like she had an amazing floor routine (15.1) and hit vault and bars. Her beam score of 14.35 was one of the highest of the competition, but due to the inflated Russian scoring may reflect a fall. If she does well in the next two days of competition, I believe that this should solidify her spot at the European Championships. If she does make that team, they will probably let her compete all around in prelims (every gymnast can compete all around), but if she qualifies ahead of Mustafina or Komova, they would probably pull her out of finals.

Anna Pavlova has been having spectacular results recently. She beat numerous national team members here and took the top score on vault. Like Dementyeva’s, her beam score may reflect a fall, but I am very impressed with her floor score; it looks possible that she brought back some tumbling. Her bars score is also high by her standards.

Alena Polyan and Yulia Inshina received average scores on vault, bars and beam. The both received 14.7s on floor. That’s a good score, but who knows how much bonus went into it. Yulia Belkobilskaya continues to shine on beam and floor; she picked up the highest beam score (14.55) and one of the higher floor scores (14.5). Unfortunately for her, that may not be enough to earn her a spot as a specialist at the European Championships; with Mustafina, Komova and Dementyeva there is a lot of depth on those two events. If I was going to guess right now, I would say that the final spot at the European Championships would go to Tatiana Nabieva; she only competed vault and bars here, but received good scores and is stronger on the events that Dementyeva is weaker on.

You can see full results from the competition here.

You can also see photos here. There were a few things that I found while looking through that seemed notable: it looks like Viktoria Komova competed a regular shaposhnikova. She had an odd leg separation on her “Komova,” though. I haven’t noticed that before. She was wearing a brace on her right ankle. Anna Dementyeva competed a Shaposhnikova 1/2 (she was also seen competing this at the Toyota Cup in December). It was only a matter of time; I believe she is the last of the world team members to compete a variation of this skill. Tatiana Nabieva has added the “Nabieva” back into her routine. She was switching up the composition of her routine in December, and I thought that it may have been gone for good since she rarely hit it. As usual, it was huge with a gigantic leg separation.

The competition continues Friday with the team finals.