The athletes from Russia and Belarus were unable to attend the 2023 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Valencia. And how would they have behaved if they had been let in? Once again, would we all have won or could the new queen Daria Varfolomeev compete?
“Championship” tried to come up with a system for comparing ratings and came to an unequivocal conclusion.
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Given the particularities of our sport, we can’t just take scores from other tournaments and compare them, because we won’t get a true picture. Much depends on the judges, the state of the tournament, usually the referees are more loyal to the gymnasts of the country where the competitions are held.
Estimates can only be guessed and compared through some secondary characteristics. Let’s try to do this.
Ilona Zeynalova
Photo: Gongga Laisong/China News Service/TASS
The representative of Azerbaijan, Ilona Zeynalova, performed at the Games of the CIS countries. She also participated in the World Championship in Valencia. It is through it that you can try to compare scores in different tournaments. But here it must be borne in mind that Ilona could not do all the exercises equally in Minsk and Valencia.
Therefore, we chose the ball that Zeynalova passed more or less exactly at the Games of the CIS countries and at the World Cup. In Valencia, her score with the ball is 28.0 (difficulty-12.7, art-7.55, performance-7.75). In Minsk she-31.85 (difficulty-15.2, art-8.4, performance-8.25). The score differs by 3.85 points and there is a difference in each of the criteria.
The difficulty and performance are quite difficult to compare in different tournaments, since this score depends on what exactly the gymnast did in the performance. For example, she did not meet the requirements to fish and received much less.
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We leave these notes as they are and assume that in the Minsk and Valencia tournaments the judges considered the criteria more or less the same. It’s only worth remembering that at national tournaments judges may turn a blind eye to some things, but at the world level no concessions should be expected.
Alina Gornosko
Photo by: RIA Novosti
But the evaluation of art can be safely compared, since this is purely the work of the judges and here it does not depend much on the gymnast. The accents and points in the exercise are usually always the same, unless, of course, there is some kind of error in the execution. That is why we did the exercise with the ball, which Ilona performed in approximately the same way at two tournaments.
The order of the ratings can be imagined. For simplicity, let’s reduce the score for each event by 0.85; Whether it is an artistic adjustment to the world level, it is for this value that Ilona Zeynalova’s scores differ at the Games of the CIS countries and at the World Championship. And now let’s calculate the scores of Russian Lala Kramarenko and Belarusian Alina Gornosko, who competed in the all-around in Minsk and took first and second place.
Lala Kramarenko, CIS Games Hoop: 35.35 – 0.85 = 34.5 Ball: 36.2 – 0.85 = 35.35 Clubs: 36.05 – 0.85 = 35.2 Ribbon: 35.8 – 0.85 = 34 .95 Total: 140.0Alina Gornosko, CIS Games Hoop: 37.3 – 0.85 = 36.45 Ball: 34.15 – 0.85 = 33.3 Clubs: 33.75 – 0.85 = 32.9 Ribbon: 34.4 – 0.85 = 33 .55 Total: 136.2
And now let’s compare these results with the results of the world championship. The German Daria Varfolomeev, who eliminated all her rivals in Valencia, received 137.45, and the Italian Sofia Raffaeli, who finished second, got 135.7.
And what happens? Kramarenko would have beaten absolutely everyone with a huge advantage! Including the new queen. Varfolomeev would be second and Gornosko third.
Lala Kramarenko
Photo: Dmitry Golubovich, Championship
The result is certainly interesting. There may be doubts about the rating of the difficulty of the apparatus and the body, but it is not entirely correct to subtract this score from the ratings of Kramarenko and Gornosko based on the rating of another gymnast. In my opinion, our version with the artistic adjustment only is the most correct.
In any case, the reality of the evaluations of the gymnasts from Russia and Belarus can only be seen after their return to the world stage. This will take place on January 1, 2024. Everything else is guesswork and fantasy. But no one bothers us to guess and fantasize that the Russian gymnast is the strongest in the world.
The former Russian is the new queen of gymnastics:
Varfolomeev triumphantly completed the 2023 World Cup. The former Russian won the all-around!
