Melitina Staniouta Announces Retirement

The star of team Belarus in recent years, Melitina Staniouta has decided to retire from competition. Melitina was born on November 15, 1993. She is the great granddaughter of the famous actress Stefaniya Staniouta was was rumored to have been able to do a split when she was well into her 70s. Melitina was discovered for gymnastics at a very early age when a coach saw her at a bus stop and determined "gymnastics was just in her."

Melitina was known for her leaps and an extremely difficult pivot: a cossack turn starting on the floor that develops into a full penchee turn. At her debut in the 2009 World Championships in Mie, Melitina won silver with her team and bronze with hoop. She has collected multiple silver and bronze medals from apparatus finals in world events and won the all around silver medal at the European Championship in Baku in 2014. In 2015 Melitina won the gold with ribbon at the Summer Universiade in Gwandju. She finished 5th at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Melitina will also be remembered for very risky catches with hoop, wonderful work with rope, and, very recently, an elegant gala routine with an open-back purple leotard and two ribbons. Melitina has appeared in various fashion shoots and commercials including the commercial for  the bottled water Bon Aqua which featured various gymnasts from Belarus.

A Fair Podium, Maybe

Once in a while, we, fans, see the gymnasts we actually enjoy watching. I think the top 3 spots at the World Games in Cali ended up in harmony with fan preferences. Now that judges are taking and re-taking their qualification exams,  I can't help but wonder if the next competition will bring more results looking like this, Staniouta from Belarus, next to Rizatdinova from the Ukraine:

I happen to prefer Staniouta, as a gymnast, but both Maksymenko and Rizatdinova are showing significant improvement, and they always had a lot of charm and expression. The World Championship in Kiev will likely bring many medals to the Ukrainian team and I hope these medals come without depriving other deserving competitors.

Melitina Staniouta Makes My Head Spin

I am enjoying the training videos from Grand Prix- Thiais and I feel very inspired. In the absence of Kanaeva, we have much more contested competitions now, and though girls like Mamun, Merkulova and Maksymenko are the favorites, some wonderful, even younger stars have begun to shine, like Durunda and Yusifova from Azerbaijan, and Rakhmatova from Uzbekistan.

But Melitina Staniouta, who is not a new star, has absolutely won me.

Dear fans, just watch the pivot she does starting at 1:03 of this video and tell me: isn't this beautiful girl the best gymnast in the world right now?



Seriously, I don't want to jinx her but I really hope she wins many gold medals this year. I thought she simply got "robbed" at the last competition in Holon, where she should have been first with clubs and with ribbon, but instead only won the hoop and got two silvers. Silver is not bad, but for someone of this class and talent, I just don't feel it is enough.

I am not going to discuss judging issues right now but will say that I do hope Melitina stays healthy. Sometimes, bad luck with injuries gets in the way of very deserved success. This kind of misfortune, involving a broken ankle, already hurt another star from Belarus, the fabuluous Larissa Lukyanenko, who should have competed for the top spot at the Worlds in 1993.

Much like Lukyanenko in the 90s, right now Melitina performs undoubtedly the best jumps in the sport, and some of the very best pivots. In addition, she puts a lot of risk with the apparatus in her routines and she has improved her confidence and expressivness. Nothing should get in the way of her path to the gold.

My Top 4 Routines in 2013

Now that the first two strong tournaments of the year, one in Estonia and one in Moscow, have finished, I can say I watched the new routines of most of the world's best gymnasts. I have made my picks as follows

1. Top Ball Routine: Margarita Mamun. This is a lyrical, brilliant, light-as-a-feather routine, in which I think Rita Mamun displays some of the best arm movements in the business of dance and gymnastics. We see risk and we also see expression:



2. Top Clubs Routine: Alexandra Merkulova. This is one of the few routines with a vocal and with words that I actually enjoy. Sasha Merkulova takes the credit for looking like she is having tons, tons of fun performing and not like she is pretending to dance. I really feel sad when so many gymnast just move their hips around because now you have to include "dance elements" and they are not feeling the music, or the mood, or anything at all. Joyful dancing aside, this is a routine full of small movements and tricks with the clubs, which is what every routine should be. None of the elements look static and a few are pretty original. The routine covers the entire carpet and matches the music:



3. Top Ribbon Routine: Melitina Staniouta. A classy and classical routine beyond any doubt. As we know, all of Melitina's leaps and pivots are some of the strongest in the world and she has put a lot of effort into interpreting the music and making this routine very "alive" and fluid. Melitina Staniouta is, physically, the best gymnast in the world right now. If her expression matches her physical fitness, she should be winning gold after gold. But mostly with this wonderfully sophisticated ribbon:



4. Top Hoop Routine: Ganna Rizatdinova. Ukranian gymnasts completely "own" the hoop as an apparatus. Maksymenko has presented a strong hoop routine as well but Ganna's pirouettes and her dramatic, yet, not drama queen-ish interpertation has put it over the top of me. She is truly flying high like her hoop here, taking over all the emotional space she can: