A largely uncelebrated member of the fantastic assembly of talent that the crumbling Soviet union had to offer in 1992 she may be (she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page), but Elena had my favourite bars set of them all.
Her jaeger is so high and shows such amazing flexibility in her hips, but mainly I love this routine for the final combination which striked me as being incredibly difficult and original both in the context of its time and the present day. A stalder to immediate endo straight into a double front half out dismount of a quality that puts others who perform it then and now to shame. It really does make for a fantastic end.
It is routines like this that represent what I often think of as the "randomness" of some scoring in the 10 system. I have no idea when I look back at certain routines why they were not front runners and this is one of them.
It’s a real shame Elena never seemed to get the recognition she deserved for the quality of this routine. Personally I would set its quality far higher than Gutsu’s.
Ooh, that is how a double front half out should look. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteYes the final combination is just...wow. And proof that double front half out need not look ugly (ahem Nastia ahem) Sigh too many of the Soviets did not get the recognition they deserve, they were just too freaking deep.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Nastia's comes on the heels of a 45 minute routine. She can do the dismount all right when she's just warming it up and not exhausted. But since her routine IS so long...it's fug and needs to go.
ReplyDeleteStill, I like this one. Very nice.