CoP - Tip of The Month

One of the CR (compositional requirements) on floor exercise is to show a dance passage worth 0.5. It must be composed of two different leaps or hops from the CoP. According to the code, "the objective is to create a large flowing and traveling movement pattern." This can be done directly or indirectly. Most of the times gymnasts will do it indirectly and take some extra runs into their second leap/hop. This can get boring and redundant.

Here are some examples of indirect dance passages done with some flair.

Deng Linlin 
Mai Murakami 
Marta Pihan-Kulezsa

What not to do Alicia Sacramone. She practically stopped and broke her indirect leap passage.

Example of direct dance passage by Yulia Belokobylskaya. I really like how she doesn't have to run into her second leap.

Just Because...

Today there is a snowstorm warning and it's supposed to feel like -40 Celsius! So I thought here is Yulia Belokobylskaya 2011 team final floor routine. I like this routine and the music. The music is by Edvin Marton called Ice Symphony. Hopefully there will be no power outages today like the ice storm before Christmas 2013.

Yang Hak Seon & Yulia Belokobylskaya Swiss Cup Routines (prelims)

Russian Floor Divas

This montage was made by HuangQiushuangFan. HuangQiushuangFan said, "nobody does it quite like Russia." You are absolutely right HuangQiushuangFan.

Quick Thoughts on Russian Championships 2012 part 1

First here are the results for Senior AA: Senior Results 

1. Aliya Mustafina is the all-around champion! She didn't show full difficulty but she has made a statement. She is definitely the leader for Russia and Russia absolutely needs her on their Olympic team. As the Olympic comes closer Aliya will most likely be in full strength with full difficulty and ready to challenge for a team & AA title.

2. Ksenia Afanasyeva has proven that she is too valuable to be left off the Olympic team. She manages to hit all her routines and showed that she really wants to make it to another Olympic games. She didn't show full difficulty on FX but did try to upgrade her double pike to a leap jump for CV. And finally she hits her Onodi + Side-somi combo on BB.

3. Anastasia Grishina has finally landed a DTY this is great news because a DTY will almost guarantee her a spot on the Olympic team. She had problems on bars and beam but this was only one competition and we'll see how well she does in the event finals. What really surprised me was that she had the top floor score. I think Grishina mainly focused on VT & FX for this competition and that could explain why she didn't do too well on UB & BB.

4. Yulia Inshina was consistent and quiet as usual. I was quite surprise at how well Inshina performed. She's proving to the Russian committee that she could help out somewhere and could be a very good alternate.

5. Anna Pavlova did well. She is still a very elegant and clean gymnast but with very low difficulty. What I like about Pavlova is that she is still competing and was helping her regional team for the team qualifications.

9. Yulia Belokobylskaya didn't have the best meet. On her best event she only scored 14.000 but on the bright side she did moderately well on BB.

*Please note that Komova, Dementyeva, Sidorova and Nabieva were not competing.

There are videos floating around on YT but the quality are poor due to the poor live stream, some videos = yannaGym 

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).