Russia continued its golden run Saturday at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart (GER), winning the gold in Group All-around competition and exacting revenge for a poor performance that kept them off the podium in 2014.
The Group (Diana Borisova, Daria Kleshcheva, Anastasiia Maksimova, Sofya Skomorokh, Anastasiia Tartareva and Maria Tolkacheva) posted the highest scores for both of its routines with the Five Ribbons (18.016) and Clubs and Hoops (18.250) for a total of 36.266, more than half a point above reigning World champions Bulgaria (35.583).
Spain, winner of the Clubs event at the past two World Championships, took bronze (34.900) after two consistent performances. Italy, silver medallists from 2013 and 2014, had a chance to challenge for a medal, but a dropped Ribbon late in their second routine cost them dearly, and they finished fourth (34.832), ahead of Japan and Israel.
At the end of the competition, 10 countries were named as having qualified for the Rhythmic Group competition at next summer’s Olympic Games in Rio.
The Russian Team: Diana Borisova, Daria Kleshcheva, Anastasiia Maksimova, Sofya Skomorokh, Anastasiia Tartareva and Maria Tolkacheva
Event finals in Group Rhythmic (5 Ribbons and Hoops and Clubs) will be held Sunday. With the Group All-around title, Russia has a chance to complete a clean sweep of the golds up for grabs at this World Championships. In the individual competition, three-time World All-around champion Yana Kudryavtseva won every gold except the Hoop, which was taken by her teammate Margarita Mamun.
Reigning World Rhythmic Gymnastics champion Yana Kudryavtseva (RUS) captured her third consecutive World All-around title Friday night in Stuttgart (GER), cementing her status as a favorite for gold at the Rio Olympic Games next summer.
After winning gold with the Ball, Clubs, Ribbon and in the team competition earlier this week, the All-around title is the 17-year-old’s fifth gold medal at these World Championships, and her 13th overall. Since beginning to compete on the senior level in 2013, Kudryavtseva has proven nearly unbeatable in competition, and Friday was no exception.
But it was not quite the domination that was expected from “the Angel with Iron Wings,” as Kudryavsteva has been nicknamed. After an excellent start with the Clubs, where she scored 19.000 points, the Muscovite made a slight error with the Ribbon, allowing her best friend and biggest rival, Margarita Mamun (RUS) to move into the lead by 0.2 points with one routine left to perform.
With gold in her grasp, Mamun dropped the Ribbon early in her last routine, scoring an uncharacteristically low 18.050 on the event where she was World champion in 2014. Kudryavtseva took full advantage of the opportunity, posting the highest score of the competition (19.116) with the Ball to bounce back for the gold, her third consecutive World title (75.632).
As she typically has for the past two years in international competition, Mamun settled for silver (74.766). Veteran Melitina Stanioiuta (BLR), already a bronze medallist with the Ball in Stuttgart, allowed the apparatus to slip out of her hands early Friday night but recovered well enough to finish with a second bronze in the All-around (72.132).
Reigning World Rhythmic Gymnastics champion Yana Kudryavtseva
The usually collected Kudryavtseva pumped her fists and bowed to the crowd following her routine, knowing she had secured the title. Kudryavtseva has been nursing a slight leg injury in Stuttgart and opted not to compete for the World title with the Hoop, which in her absence was won by Mamun.
On a night where Olympic qualification berths were at stake, few among the 24 All-around finalists managed four clean routines. Reigning World bronze medallist Ganna Rizatdinova watched her chances of a fifth medal at this Championships vanish after she failed to catch her Clubs out of bounds at the end of her first routine of the night. Son Yeon Jae (KOR), another pre-competition favorite, made several errors during her Ribbon routine and finished 11th overall.
2013 and 2014 World champion Yana Kudryavtseva (RUS) pocketed another three gold medals during the second night of individual apparatus finals at the 2015 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart (GER).
Seventeen-year-old Kudryavtseva, who successfully defended her World title with the Ball Tuesday night, added World titles with the Clubs and Ribbon Thursday, as well as an additional gold in the team competition, in the company of her countrywomen Margarita Mamun and Aleksandra Soldatova.
Despite a slight leg injury that kept her out of the Hoop competition here in Stuttgart, the 17-year-old Muscovite has been nothing less than dominant since the Championships began. With the Clubs, she was flawless, scoring 19.066 points to take her third consecutive World title with the apparatus.
Soldatova, who outscored Mamun to qualify for the Clubs final, took a distant silver (18.583), her second of these Championships.
The last competitor to perform with the Ribbon, Kudryavtseva appeared to improvise slightly at the end of her routine after failing to catch the Ribbon’s wand following a throw. Her score, 18.866, was still enough to edge Mamun (18.850), the 2014 World champion with the Ribbon, due to a superior execution score.
Yana Kudryavtseva, Russia
Ukraine’s Ganna Rizatdinova won bronze with both Clubs (18.566) and Ribbon (18.383), just as she did Tuesday with the Hoop, giving the 22-year-old three individual bronze medals so far in Stuttgart.
The Russian trio of Kudryavtseva, Mamun and Soldatova also finished 1-2-3 in qualifications, giving the Russians the World team title, the total of the eight best scores obtained by a country’s gymnasts. With 149.990 points, Russia finished more than eight points ahead of Belarus and Ukraine.
The 2015 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships continues with the individual All-around final Friday night. Kudryavtseva, the top qualifier, is a favorite to win her third consecutive World All-around title.
Russia struck quickly as finals at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships began Tuesday night in Stuttgart (GER). Superstar Yana Kudryavtseva won the World title with the Ball for the second consecutive year, while teammate Margarita Mamun took gold with the Hoop.
Seventeen-year-old Kudryavtseva, the undisputed queen of Rhythmic Gymnastics for the past two years, continued the domination she showed at the 2013 and 2014 Worlds. In spite of a slight mishap on a catch with the Ball, the judges awarded the “Angel with Iron Wings” the highest note of the evening on either apparatus (19.025 points).
That score put her a hair over Mamun, 20, who had to settle for silver by a margin of only 0.025 (19.000). Veteran Melitina Staniouta (BLR) won bronze for the second year in a row (18.350).
Kudryavtseva, who has won the World All-around title at the past two World Championships, chose to sit out the Hoop competition this year to keep from aggravating a leg injury. That left the field open for her Russian teammates, Mamun and rising star Aleksandra Soldatova, 17.
With the highest scores in both difficulty and execution (18.950 points total), Mamun was the big winner in the Hoop final, pocketing her sixth World title and first with the Hoop.
Yana Kudryavtseva at Rhythmic Gymnastics Worlds
In her first-ever individual World final, Soldatova won the silver (18.650), a few tenths ahead of Ganna Rizatdinova (UKR), who won the World title with the Hoop in 2013 (18.583).
Russia ended the first day of finals with four medals, two gold and two silver.
The Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships continue Wednesday with the first day of qualifications with the Clubs and Ribbon. Finals for both apparatus will be held Thursday evening.
Five questions with Natalyia Kuzmina, President of the FIG Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Committee
Eastern Europe has traditionally been a bastion of Rhythmic Gymnastics, but we have been seeing that gymnasts from the Americas and Asia are beginning to challenge this domination a bit. How do you explain this ?
Kuzmina: “You’re right: there has been visible progress in Asia, not only in Uzbekistan but in Korea, Japan and other countries. But there has also been notable progress in America. I was at the Pan American Games in July in Toronto, and I was very surprised to see that there were 6,000 spectators who came to see the Rhythmic events, not just the relatives of the athletes but local people, because Canada does not have a big Rhythmic tradition. The gymnasts from the Pan American countries as well have made a great deal of progress and have a lot to look forward to, as do those from Africa. We are very aware at the FIG that this sport must be universal. We have put in place FIG Academies and judges courses to help spread knowledge and training techniques. It’s very important that the coaches and choreographers from leading countries organise seminars and give courses on how to compose a routine and use the apparatus. I am expecting to see many continents in the All-around final here in Stuttgart.”
Yana Kudryavtseva, Russia,
Yana Kudryavtseva (RUS) has been the dominant gymnast of the past two World Championships. What makes her such an exceptional gymnast ?
Kuzmina: “It’s true that she is unique. Yana has exceptional apparatus elements and harmony with music. She has excellent coaches and benefits from wonderful training conditions put in place by the Russian Rhythmic Federation. Its President and Head coach, Irina Viner, has a long-term vision and has put in place an organisation and methods so that the gymnasts are always well prepared. In Russia as well, there are music specialists, specialists for choreography and a big medical center in the vicinity if they need to see doctors. That too is unique.”
What needs to be done to continue to develop Rhythmic outside Europe ?
Kuzmina: “Courses are one thing, but we also have to think of ways to render our programme more exciting and attractive to all federations. We should revise the code of points in order to support the principle of universality. This idea may seem new, but why not try to develop team Rhythmic Gymnastics competitions for men like they do in Japan? Or pairs with two apparatus? Or Mixed Pairs? There are a lot of ideas coming from our federations. One must know how to evolve. We cannot just leave the situation as it is, because we know that the competition is strong between sports to continue to be part of the Olympic programme.”
Five judges from the 2014 World Rhythmic Championships in Izmir were just sanctioned by the FIG Disciplinary Commission for biased judging. What does this say to you ?
Kuzmina: “Obviously, we’re not happy about this. We have fought to have fair, objective judging in Rhythmic Gymnastics. We should organise a more practical education system for new judges. The judges from Asia or South America especially don’t have a lot of opportunity to get experience. All the judges must be objective and honest. A judge must judge only what he or she sees, without taking into account the name of the gymnast or which country or continent she comes from. But I think that over the years we have made progress. It’s not enough to penalize the judges, because judges are only human and they make errors. The main thing is educating them and then giving them ample practice.”
Natalyia Kuzmina, President of the FIG Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Committee
The FIG Rhythmic Technical Committee is preparing a new code of points for the 2017-2020 Olympic cycle. What changes would you like to see in the new code ?
Kuzmina: “That’s a difficult question. We would like to eliminate the repetition of elements. We have a special scientific workgroup that has done some research and collected a lot of data. The important thing is the handling of the apparatus, because we are a sport that uses apparatus. So we would like to focus on the manipulation of the apparatus as well as the artistic side of the sport: the use of music and how the gymnast works with it. That’s what I hope to see in the future.”
The 2015 FIG Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup series ended in a Russian rout. Teammates Margarita Mamun (RUS) and Yana Kudryavtseva (RUS) shared the honors as World Cup competition came to a close this past weekend in Kazan (RUS). Kudryavtseva, the reigning two-time World champion, claimed the series All-around title; Mamun won or tied for every individual event.
World Cup rankings are generated by awarding gymnasts a certain number of points based on results at World Cup events. A gymnast’s best four performances are taken into account, and the points added to generate a final points total that determines winners of the World Cup series. The seven-stop World Cup series debuted in Lisbon (POR) at the end of March and included competitions in Bucharest (ROU), Pesaro (ITA), Tashkent (UZB), Budapest (HUN), Sofia (BUL) and finally Kazan (RUS).
Kudryavtseva, already victorious in the All-around at four of this season’s World Cup events, was guaranteed to win the World Cup series All-around even before competition began in Kazan. The 17-year-old Muscovite also finished second to Mamun in the World Cup rankings with the Hoop and Ribbon, and third with the Ball. The good friends and training partners tied with the Clubs.
Mamun, 19, solidified her status as the season’s top gymnast in World Cup competition with the Hoop, Ball, Clubs and Ribbon after sweeping the gold medals in Kazan.
Margarita Mamun, Russia. Credit: Volker Minkus.
Kudryavtseva and Mamun, who normally finish 1-2 in international competition, are expected to renew their rivalry at the World Championships in Stuttgart (GER) September 7-13. In spite of a slow start to her season, Kudryavtseva has not shown much tendency to crumble under pressure; she has swept the medals at two World Cups in 2015. Not for nothing is she nicknamed the “angel with iron wings.”
Mamun, meanwhile, has also twice swept World Cup competitions this season, albeit both times when Kudryavtseva was not in the field.
The Russian Group won the World Cup Series titles in Group All-around as well as with the 5 Ribbons. In the Three Pairs of Clubs and Two Hoops category, however, the Russians settled for third, behind Italy and Bulgaria.
Less than three weeks out from the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart (GER), 2015 FIG World Cup Series titles are on the line at this weekend’s Kazan World Cup in Russia.
World Cup competition in Kazan promises to be heavy on Rhythmic superstars, all of whom are looking toward the World Championships, the first of two qualifying events for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
At the top of the list is reigning World champion Yana Kudryavtseva (RUS), who has already guaranteed herself the FIG World Cup All-around title, based on results from previous World Cups. With two World titles under her belt, 17-year-old Kudryavtseva is the ingenue of the sport and an early favorite for the Olympic title in Rio next summer.
Yana Kudryavtseva, RUS. Credit: Volker Minkus/FIG
In World Cup series competition, where gymnasts are awarded points based on their rankings at World Cup events, Kudryavtseva and teammate Margarita Mamun both look set to claim World Cup titles with multiple apparatus.
A handful of challengers, including Melitina Staniouta (BLR) and Neta Rivkin (ISR) could also make noise at the top. In Group competition, 2014 World champions Bulgaria join Italy, Israel and perennial powerhouse Russia in the rush for World Cup titles in the All-around, with the 5 Ribbons and with the 3 Clubs and 2 Hoops.
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