The picture is Alla Sotnikova's gold medal ... from her Instagram account - thank you, Alla! Congratulations!
It was a fantastic team effort, highlighted by Polina Fyodorova's stable performances on bars, beam and floor, Maria Paseka's powerful vaulting (strong Amanar) and bars work, and Kramarenko's bars. I loved the way that Fyodorova's technique on bars looked so effortless (wonderful 1.5 turn on the top of the high bar), the expressiveness of Sidorenko's floor work, and the power and emphatic charm of Elizarova. This is not to ignore the great efforts of Kramarenko and Paseka, but we see these two often on the international scene and their gymnastics is familiar, and on a different level. Alla Sidorenko, for example, has not featured on a national team before, and the native of St Petersburg showed her class here with calm, well rehearsed gymnastics. She was a credit to the coaching of the Kiryashov family, Alexander and Vera, who also coached 2013 Universiade champion Tatiana Nabiyeva. With the exception of Paseka, this wasn't Russia's A team, but they faced some strong competition from Japan and showed good teamwork to earn the gold.
Daria and Polina are through to tomorrow's All Around final ... Good luck, girls!
Video of today's live stream - http://youtu.be/Tc467oTdQqU
The Russian MAG team didn't really do very well today, finishing in fifth place as a team. It is difficult to comment on the standard of their performance as hardly any of their routines were shown on the livestream, but the scores give every indication that they were just outclassed here. The Japanese were very clearly the best, ahead of the Chinese, and showed some good work. The Ukraine team's effort was spoiled by a difficult time on the high bar, but Oleg Verniaiev looks likely to contend for a medal in tomorrow's AA final and there will be plenty of further medal chances in event finals for him and for Igor Radivilov. The modest Mukhail Kudashov will represent Russia in the AA final tomorrow and has qualified to vault EF. Alexei Rostov has also qualified to high bar final.
