The top seven gymnasts at Penza will compete for the six places on the Russian team for Euros, confirmed head coach Valery Alfosov today to Allsport.
On the basis of the results of the national championships, the following gymnasts are in contention:
All Around : David Belyavski and Nikolai Kuksenkov
Denis Ablyazin : floor, rings and vault
Nikita Nagorny : floor and vault
Mattvei Petrov : pommel horse
Nikita Ignatyev : rings, p-bars and high bar
Mikhail Kudashov : rings (he has a D value of 6.8 but was unable to show his best as he was still recovering from the effects of flu)
At present, the reserve is Dmitri Lankin, who has potential on floor and parallel bars.
As with the women, other gymnasts will be training for the competition and new names may still be added to the roster according to the results of control competitions.
Alfosov stressed that almost the entire team had performed below par in Penza thanks to the effects of a nasty flu bug. With another four weeks of training before travelling to Montpelier, the team would be targeting stability, better execution and higher performance quality as well as increasing the complexity of their programmes. David Belyavski, for example, has the potential to increase his D value on p bars from 6.8 to 7.