Congratulations, Russia!

Another gold medal for Russia's team in artistic gymnastics at the European Championships.  Russia now rules the sport in Europe, both men and women.  15 year old Angelina Melnikova scored the highest of all competitors across four apparatus; exactly as her team captain, Aliya Mustafina, did six years ago in her own major senior competitive debut.

Aliya waved her magic wand here and somehow helped the team to summon up courage to fight the effervescent British team.  Angelina was a strong start off gymnast on every piece, just what the team needs to settle them.  In her own quiet way, 'Gelya' makes as much difference to this team's fighting spirit as Nikita Nagorny does to the men.  

In the end, the working order put paid to a close fight.  Under pressure, Britain showed uncharacteristic errors and finished more than six points behind Russia.  EF tomorrow will tell a different story, I suspect.  Russia's victory was down to solid teamwork as much as individual brilliance.  Strong work on bars and beam gave the girls a cushion on the other apparatus, where there is less of a margin.  It should be noted, however, that the girls are landing their tumbles with far more confidence - this could be to do with the appointment of Sergei Zelikson as tumbling coach at the national training centre.

Congratulations to all the girls - and good luck now, as you prepare for Rio!

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Congratulations, Russia!

Russia won today's team final at the European Gymnastics Championships with an impressively consistent performance - not one fall!  Led by the charismatic David Belyavski, the team showed leadership over the entire field, finishing first in every apparatus except rings and high bar.  It was a very close competition against Britain, who last won Europeans just before the Olympics in 2012.  Russia's victory at the equivalent time in Olympic preparations leaves open the possibility that they could perform even better in Rio.  Their team score of 271.378 was roughly half a point higher than Japan's winning score at the Glasgow World Championships last winter.

Russia's 'shock' events were pommels and vault; pommels showing a huge turn round in form as Russia has so very often faltered there.  Not only did Britain feel the absence of their leader Max Whitlock on these pieces, it is true to say that Russia have also improved considerably.  Their strategy of developing specialists with extraordinary levels of difficulty has so far paid off this year.  They have also worked hard on team spirit and execution.  The flowering of 19 year old Nikita Nagorny as a regular member of the senior team has added depth, and perhaps the youngster has also injected some energy and confidence into the team's blood vessels.  As we progress to Rio, let's hope that all the gymnasts can stay healthy - and that, perhaps, Emin Garibov can return to full strength to reinforce the team's efforts on what is still a relative weakness, high bar.  Russia left Ivan Stretovich at home this time, but who else is in reserve?; this is a magnificent team, but they do need more strength in depth.

No single member of the team competed all six apparatus, underlining the impression that this was a very cohesive and happy team effort.  In the unofficial AA (noting that only three gymnasts competed six apparatus in the entire competition) Ukraine's Oleg Verniaiev came out on top, closely followed by Britain's Nile Wilson and Daniel Purvis.   Allowing for the fact that they each missed their weakest pieces in today's competition, both Nagorny and Belyavski could, hypothetically speaking, have competed to the level of the top AA gymnasts here.

CONGRATULATIONS to the entire team - it was wonderful to see you defend your title in such style.  It was a tense, tight competition and you all performed incredibly well under pressure.

I just wanted to add - 36 out of 36 clean routines in the top two teams - that has to be good for European gymnastics.

Full results here, including D scores - http://gym.longinestiming.com/File/00000F0200000002FFFFFFFFFFFFFF04

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