Just Because...Flashback Friday || 2013 Universiade Routines

Here is Afanasyeva's wonderful routine if you can overlook the awkwardness of the gogean leap :P.

And Yang's Gold winning vaults. Hopefully we get to see the Yang (FHS 3/1) as he's not been doing his namesake vault for awhile since he's been battling injuries. I hope he can compete his vault again one day. Also he might plan to compete the Kas 5/2. He's been the first known gymnast to successfully compete it. He's been trying to get it named after himself for awhile now.

Just Because...

I wasn't expecting to take a longer break from this blog but I am. Hopefully I will be back around September. Until then enjoy your summer.

Here's Afanasyeva's 2013 Universiade AA FX.

Ksenia Afanasyeva 2013 Universiade AA Floor

It's sad that Afanasyeva will miss 2013 worlds. She had one of the best floor routines of the year and could challenged for floor gold in Antwerp. I will be missing her this year. She won't be able to defend her world title that she won in 2011. I read that she should be recovered by December. Hopefully the next time we see her she will be doing double layouts with full twists :D Get well Afan.

Just Because...Anna Dementyeva's Beam Connection

(Source: frangymnasticsfan)

I think this beam connection is very nice. Onodi + Front Aerial + Sheep Jump (D+D+D) 0.3CV.

Yang Hak Seon's 2013 Universiade Gold Vaults

One of my favourite moments of the Universiade Games. He's incredible!

(Source:frangymnasticsfan)

Ksenia Afanasyeva's Amanar Universiade VT EF 2013

Here is her tied for gold place finish vaults. She finally debuts the rumoured Amanar vault and a nice new surprise vault of ro 1/2 on fwd 1/2 twist straight. It's amazing that she can do the Amanar at her stage in her career. She just keeps surprising. It still needs work and it looks kind of scary to be honest but the fact that she went for it is still exciting. Keeping us entertain.

Nikolai Kuksenkov Defends AA Universiade 2013

I'm still not use to his name Nikolai. His named under the Ukrainian team was Mykola. I will have to get used to Nikolai. He defends his title from 2011 and keeps his 2013 title for his new nation Russia. The MAG finals was somewhat intense and it was a close battle between a lot of the guys. Results

Thoughts on WAG AA Universiade 2013

Unofficial results. Check the gymnastics results website for official results.

This competition was intense and filled with lots of nervy moments but in the end the two top Russians pulled it together! I watched this on Russian live feed with Russian commentators. I will focus mainly on Aliya Mustafina and Ksenia Afanasyeva.

VT- Afan gets a nice 14.950 for her relatively clean DTY. Nice form on the legs but hop or step back on landing. Good start.

Mustafina has some leg form and I hope she can improve on that. Not really pleasing to see the legs but still a good vault for 14.750.

UB - Afan debuts a new composition on bars. Starts with shap + pak this time. Bars is not her forte. She gets through it for 13.750.

Mustafina proves why she is a bamf on bars. She is so good here. There were no major errors. She still did her 6.3 routine. Well executed for 15.200. That score will help her a lot.

On beam this was the nerve wreaking event for both Musty and Afan. 

Musty starts off okay but then does not connect her onodi to 2/1 turn and falls off beam. Everything goes well after that. I think she just took out her Arabian for this competition which was a good idea. But this new composition beam is not good IMO. Beam is not her forte but she is capable of hitting her routines. Even with the fall she still manages to get a decent score of 14.050. Nothing to be worried about.

Afan- debuted a new composition as well. She does a new split ring, needs work. She was super wobbly on this event it was so hard to watch. Like Musty she is hit or miss. She seemed super nervous but the crowd helped her to stay on. I much prefer this composition. I hope she can improve on this event because it has potential. She stayed on but all the missed connections and wobbles caused her a lot of deductions for a score of 13. 150 ouch.

The last rotation was much better for the two Russian girls, thank god. Afan showed why she is a world champion on floor. Stuck DLO and double pike. No major errors on her other acrobatics. Her spins were a bit iffy but still nicely done. I am amazed at her ability to keep on tumbling for so many years. She just keeps on getting better. She scores a monstrous 15.000.

Up last was Aliya Mustafina. She did a minor downgraded routine. I thought this was a nice routine and her low 13.900 was surprising to see IMHO.

In the end Aliya honestly easily won this competition. I think AA titles really suits Musty more than for Afan. I know that Afan has been doing AA forever but it feels right for Mustafina to take this title. I'm very happy and pleased that Aliya took this title. She still needs work for worlds but this is mid season and I can see that she is not in top shape and should be in better shape for Antwerp worlds. Aliya 1) 57.900 and 2) Afanasyeva 56.850.

I honestly didn't keep track of who won 3rd because I was really focused on the Russians and I was chatting with a friend. But some things worth noting. I liked Kim Bui's Loso mount + loso. Yu Minobe of Japan had a solid and nice beam routine. Elsa Garcia of Mexico dismounted with an Arabian tucked, it's very ambitious but she fell. She qualified 2nd for floor so hopefully she will be better in event finals. 

Quick Thoughts on MAG TF/QF Universiade 2013

Alright so here is my very quick recap and impressions of this event. These are unofficial scores. The broadcast only showed the last subdivision.

1) Russia 273.150 2) Ukraine 3) Japan 269.700. Yesterday I promised that I would put the results in but I'm sure my small amount of followers know where to find results. In case you don't. I like to check this site gymnastics results.

I think Russia did pretty well they were under pressure and they delivered. They had some mistakes but nothing too serious and costly. They showed some routines of the Ukrainians and Japanese but not enough. Japan pretty much had a B team compared to Russia's A team. Even though Yusuke Tanaka didn't make Japan's world team he did okay here. The broadcast showed a lot of him and he made it to some finals, yay.

I heard the results of Yang Hak Seon was great on VT, he wasn't in this subdivision. I'm hoping all the best for him in VT finals.

One of his competition will be Denis Ablyazin. He did a nice Tsuk dbl pike with a 0.3 step back IMO. His second vault FHS 5/2 with a 0.1 step back. VT1 15.350 VT2 15.400 AVG 15.375. I wonder if he will do his Li Xiaopeng vault in finals.

His floor routine was good too for 15.650. He did, fwd 5/2, 2/1 twist DLO, fwd 2/1 twist + 2/1 front tuck, Thomas Stretched, Japanese hstd, dbl pike Arabian, bwd 3/2 + fwd 1/1, 3/1 twist dismount.

Thoughts on WAG Russian TF Universiade 2013

I've only watched the Russian team because only subdivision 4 had live feed and there wasn't really much to comment about the other teams. The Russian gymnasts won with a comfortable lead of 175.5. Japan 2nd and Germany 3rd. The live feed wasn't great but at least I got to see some gymnastics. The audio for the commentators was hard to hear as the background crowd noise drowned the commentary. I did my best to hear what they said.

Please note these are unofficial results and I will post the official results soon. I also didn't edit this post so some things might not make sense.

The floor rotation started out good enough. There were some mistakes but some beautiful stuff.

-Tatiana Nabieva started on floor. It's been a while since she has competed and it's nice to see her. She had lovely new floor rouitne and I like her music choice. She opened up with 3/1 twists, second pass 5/2 twists + 1/2 twist. All her spins were single L-turn and Y-turn. The only major error was her huge out of bounds on the double pike dismount. Good start for her.

-Aliya Mustafina did the the same tumblings as usual but no stag on the double arabian and only a layout front on the 5/2 twists. She changed her third pass to 3/1 twists and her dismount to double tuck. I like it that way. She did a new spin combo single L-turn + Memmel, very nice. I saw on the screen she got a score of 13.75.

-Ksenia Afanasyeva debuted her new floor rouitne. I'll be honest maybe she wasn't fully committed to the routine and the music was soft which I didn't really like the new routine but the bias in me will wait to see it more to see if I like it. I have to say that her composition steps on the floor is always the same. What I mean is she always uses the same areas of the floor to move from place to place (I hope that made sense). I didn't really see any great moment of choreography. I think it is true that artistry is being sacrifice for difficulty, sad. But she still has an elegant way of moving around and  I do like the dramatic low floor choreography after her stuck double pike. In terms of the skills and tumbles she did the same things, nothing new and she had some errors a hop on DLO and a very nerve wreaking front layout, she almost fell. I saw she got 14.750 at first it seems high but she has high difficulty and I will have to see the routine again to understand the 14.750.

The broadcast did not show Anna Dementyeva

On vault there was limited showing of the Russians. Mustafina had a stuck DTY for 14.950. They only showed Nabieva's 2nd vault RO 1/2 on front pike 1/2. Afanasyeva did 2 vaults but they only showed her 15.000 DTY with a step back. The broadcast completely skipped Maria Paseka's vaults.

UB:

-They skipped Dementyeva's routine

- Nabieva did a lovely routine. She is considered a bars specialists. I love her work and she seems so happy to be competing again. She did toe 1/1 + shap + pak, stalder 1/1 + VLW, toe 1/2 + jaeger, and Tsuk dismount. Good score for 14.400.

-Mustafina did her same 6.3 routine. She looked good enough. She does seems a little tired on this event now and I hope she can upgrade her routine but I think she will because 6.3 might not be good enough for world championships. She scores 15.000 so that's means she got 8.7 execution.

- No Afanasyeva broadcast view but heard the commentators saying she fell, ouch. I heard she got a low score of 12.55 eek.

Then when it came to beam they completely missed everyone but Dementyeva and half of Tatiana's routine. Tatiana did okay for a low difficult beam routine. She waited a bit long going into her dismount but she landed it to her feet.

Aliya got a nice score of 15.200 but no live coverage of her routine :( boo.

The highlight for me was Dementyeva's beam. She looked fierce up there. She debuted a nice double pike worth E and even though it's lower in difficulty to her 3/1 twists dismount the pike works better. She got a score of 15.300. Her beam set was, roll on mount, switch ring, onodi + front aerial + sheep jump (very beautiful connection), Aerial cartwheel + leap series, RO + layout, full turn, split ring, dbl pike dismount. Nice work from Dementyeva.

- Afanasyeva's routine was not showed but I heard she had a solid routine for a 14.200.

Overall I think the Russians did good and it was nice to see Nabieva back with her expressive attitude :D. It wasn't tough competition for the Russians but I'm happy they won on home soil.

Aliya Mustafina's Athlete's Oath at Universiade 2013

Haha Aliya was introduced as a rhythmic gymnast :D oh well.

Team Russia's 2013 Universiade Teams Announced

The team members will be Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Tatiana Nabieva, Anna Dementyeva and Maria Paseka. Source 

I read somewhere that the eligible age is 17 so technically some of the competitors don't have to be in University/College. I'm not 100% sure about this though.

It's nice to see Tatiana Nabieva and Anna Dementyeva on the team. Here is another article where Valentina Rodionenko talks about the MAG & WAG team.

This is just my fun speculation of how the team will be used. The format will be like the Olympics 5-4-3 but if I'm not mistaken the qualifying round will also be the team finals. So 4 gymnasts up and 3 scores count for team finals. The first gymnast I name will be the score that they will most likely want to discard.

Here's my line up, just for fun speculation :)

VT: Tatiana Nabieva, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Aliya Mustafina, Maria Paseka
UB: Ksenia Afanasyeva, Maria Paseka, Tatiana Nabieva, Aliya Mustafina
BB: Ksenia Afanasyeva, Anna Dementyeva, Aliya Mustafina (this one was tricky because Paseka and Nabieva are pretty useless on beam and floor so all these three gymnasts scores must count)
FX: Anna Dementyeva, Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva

It is interesting to note that Valentina did say Nabieva restored AA but doesn't have a second vault so she could contribute on beam and floor in qualification.

Kohei Uchimura Wins 2013 67th Japanese MAG AA Nationals

Source with more information

1) Kohei Uchimura 91.850 + 90.500 = 182.350 AA Day 1 & 2 combined
2) Ryohei Kato 89.800 + 88.55 = 178.350 AA
3) Yusuke Tanaka 88.050 + 89.250 = 177.300 AA

The translation was rough to understand so hopefully I did the scores correctly. I tried watching this event live but my feed was really choppy and then I couldn't refresh the link. I got tired so I went to sleep. The Japanese Universiade team for 2013 will be Ryohei Kato, Yusuke Tanaka, Shogo Nonomura, Chihiro Yoshioga and Hiroki Ishikawa. I'm not sure if I got all the names right.

Oh I just found Day 2 part 1 (watch it before it might get deleted)

Emin Garibov 2013 Universiade Games Promo Video

Emin Garibov is the two time 2012-2013 European high bar champion.

Ksenia Afanasyeva Training Early for 2013 Universiade Games

Source

While the majority of the Russian gymnasts decided to take a rest after the 2013 European Championships Ksenia Afanasyeva continued to resume training. Here is my quick thoughts and synopsis of the article:

The Russian national team will start training for the Universiade Games on May 5th but Afanasyeva started training 5 days earlier. Afanasyeva is currently at Round Lake with her personal coach Marina Nazarova. It must be nice that she is training quietly in the gym before the other girls come in. I like that she is serious about her gymnastics career. She says that it’s easier for the other gymnasts to maintain good shape while she probably finds it harder to stay in shape and she says she is in decent shape. I personally think she is in great shape. She also says that she had nothing to do and she was probably bored so she and her coach decided to train early. The interviewer asked Ksenia if she was disappointed at some of her European results and she said, “yes, now everything is fine” (laughs). Perhaps she is disappointed with her AA results. I can see her doing well at the Universiade Games for AA.

I’m really enjoying her positive work ethic.