The Girl with the Long Name

Yulia B-e-l-o-k-o-b-y-l-s-k-a-y-a (14 letters). For short I will refer Belokobylskaya as Belo.

Belo first emerged into the elite scene at the 2011 European Championships. She was Komova’s replacement as the fourth gymnast to go to Europeans. Her best finish was a bronze medal on FX.

Belo is quite a pretty gymnast with elegance. Her standout apparatus is FX. She reminds me of the Chinese gymnasts because she has a lot of twisting passes. In a way she is the underdog of the Russian team. Her chances of making the Russian Olympic team are actually not bad. She could find herself being the floor specialist or alternate in London. Her best chance of making the Russian team is to be able to vault a DTY. She has not been successful with consistently landing a DTY. Her bars difficulty is good but her execution will be hammered by the FIG judges. In Tokyo world championships she was rightfully not used on bars in prelims because of her poor execution. It was a shame to not see her bars in Tokyo prelims because she does have some interesting skills. She does an Galante (inbar Tkatchev) and was actually the first gymnast to do an inbar Shaposh. The inbar Shaposh was named after her more popular teammate Komova, as the Komova II. Her BB is just ok. When she hits her BB routine can be a very good set but I just can’t help but wonder if she can truly handle all the skills she does in her routines. It feels like she just learned her skills the night before. She’s not refined on BB or UB. IMO she is doing skills she is not ready to compete and that they are actually relatively new skills (upgrades) that she recently learned. She did take out the standing Arabian on BB so that's a first good step. Hopefully she'll be able to make her skills look more easy and refine at the up coming Russian Championships.

The girl with the long name might not make it to the Olympics but I can still see her contributing to team Russia in the next quad (’13-16). Hopefully she will be able to earn a medal on FX in future world championships.

Here are Some of Belo's Best FX Routines.

 

She's not the best bar worker but she did have some really interesting skills and she was the first gymnast to perform the Komova II (inbar shaposh).