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| Courtesy of the RGF |
Aliya Mustafina successfully defended her national title today with a convincing, if not totally faultless, display, showing herself to be preparing well for the coming internationals. She also led her Moscow team to a strong first position in the qualifying for team final, later this week.
Aliya has now matched the illustrious Svetlana Khorkina for the number of national all around titles she has won (previously 2009, 2012 and 2013) although Khorkina's career wins were accured over a longer period of time - 1993, 1995, 1997, and 2002. Looking fit and more energetic than at any period of last year, Mustafina shows much promise for the coming year if she can build on her early year training and continue to develop. She looked especially strong on beam and floor, but suffered a deduction on bars, where she competed her 2011 routine but suffered a deduction when she hit a landing mat with her feet.
Mustafina's Moscow team mates Alla Sosnitskaya followed her closely into second place all around, and Anastasia Grishina, who performed mostly watered down routines and didn't look very happy, managed to win the bronze medal.
We were rewarded for our patience with a good performance from Viktoria Komova on the bars, but a fall from beam will have dampened the excitement of her return to competition somewhat. She competed three pieces, no floor exercise at this moment in time. Ksenia Afanasyeva performed well on her only piece, vault, contributing 14.933 to her team's score (Maria Paseka managed to achieve the highest mark on vault). There were some high scores on bars from unexpected places, in particular Moscow's Daria Spiridinova (15.133) who leads qualification for this apparatus ahead of Anna Rodionova and Viktoria Komova. Mustafina leads qualifications on beam with a 15.4, by far the highest score, and also is ahead on floor, with a 15.1, closely followed by Sosnitskaya.
Young Maria Kharenkova competed only on bars and beam and had a mediocre competition today, by her own standards. She has I think qualified to beam final so perhaps will be able to pull out a good result on Sunday in the event finals.
The full results are available (in Russian) here.
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| Sosnitskaya, Mustafina, Grishina - three champions from Moscow |
There are already some videos available.
Albert from the All Around has uploaded the entire live stream of subdivision 2 onto Youtube.
Aliya Mustafina floor
Aliya Mustafina beam
Viktoria Komova bars