First World Cup for 2013: Amazing!

I watched Marc's livestream of the Tartu, Estonia, World Cup event and I am wowed, just wowed. First of all, the elegant Ukranian Ganna Rizatdinova deserved to win. I really enjoyed her hoop routine:




Ganna's clubs are also wonderful but I think she can work on her apparatus technique. Melitina Staniouta from Belarus, who is one of my favorite gymnasts of this century, made a big error with ball and still finished second.

But to me this tournament had three new stars with just amazing potential: Marina Durunda, Lala Yusifova (both from Azerbaijan) and the new Israeli gymnast, Nataly Mendelson. Mendelson has a lot of control in her pivots and she did a joyful, confident, and dynamic ribbon routine. Marina Durunda is very elegant and clean and shows some nice risks. Lala Yusifova is an old favorite of mine, an abolute treasure. I wrote about her here and here. I am awaiting videos from this event and will share them.

In the meantime, you can watch the apparatus finals on this livestream: http://www.gymnasticsdvd.de/live/ tomorrow at 15:00 Estionan time, which is 8 a.m. for me on the U.S. East Coast :-)

Ronit and Rebecca Shine in Boston

While everyone else was watching the Superbowl, I attended, as any rhythmic gymnastics fan should, an invitational at Shady Hill High School in Cambridge. Rebecca Sereda and Ronit Shamuilov, America's top rhythmic gymnasts, looked more mature, bedazzled in sparkly leos and very confident.

The two of them really will compete with each other and I am hopeful that, unlike many other teams, the US will have, TWO top gymnasts, who motivate each other instead of designating one "prima."The new routines need lots of work because we are still in the beginning of the season but they did show beautiful moves already:

New Bulgarian Beauty: Kristina Tasheva

Finally, I found some time to share with you how thrilled I am that Kristina Tasheva from "Akademik" (the same club as Simona Peycheva) became part of the national team. Kristina placed 2nd after Silvia Miteva at the first test competition in Sofia:



Kristina strikes me as a very gifted athlete, but also as someone who looks ready and happy to work very, very hard. She just puts a lot of attention and effort in every movement, so I do believe that she can "polish" her routines to perfection. This is a strong, yet, flowing and expressive, routine, although I'd like to see more originality with the hoop (the hoop used to be, dear fans, the most "Bulgarian" apparatus).

The big question is: will the Bulgarian Federation allow another girl from "Akademik" to compete at international events, especially if Simona Peycheva does return, as she says she will? How will Silvia Miteva and Maria Mateva respond to actual competition within the national team? Time will tell.