The event finals took place on Sunday, the 21st of February, in Baku. There were hardly any surprises as all of the top qualified managed to win their respective final: Chusovitina was first of vault, Lina Philipp won bars and Flavia Saraiva took both the beam and the floor title.
For the vault top place, Oksana Chusovitina executed a front handspring layout full (a vault with a difficulty of 5.8) well controlled, with a hop forward, and a tall and secure Tsukahara 1 1/2.
Vault podium: 1 Oksana Chusovitina, 2 Tjasa Kysselef 3 Lisa Ecker
The new German senior, Lina Philipp won the bars final with a 14+ score, improving her first day score. The highlight of her routine is the opening series of Shaposhnikova to Pak to Maloney to overshoot to handstand. She has good execution throughout, small leg separations being the most noticeable breaks in her routine.
Bars podium 1 Lina Philipp 2 Daniele Hypolito 3 Flavia Saraiva
Flavia Saraiva hit her complex and brave beam routine. She received a 14.8/6.3, so lower execution and difficulty compared to the first day (15.15/6.5), although in the finals she didn’t have any big wobbles. I would have expected a higher E score at least. Still, it’s a major achievement that she hit the routine both days, presenting all the difficult tumbling. Saraiva also won the floor final. Her tumbling is good (full in, 2 1/2 twist, double pike, double tuck) but the routine composition seems to be lacking some more complex leaps or turns for a higher difficulty score.
Sweden’s Emma Larsson also had a good season debut in Baku with silver medals on beam (bhs-bhs- layout to two feet, aerial walkover to wolf jump, Onodi, Y turn, double pike dismount) and floor (full in, Memmel, double pike, double tuck).
Here is Saraiva on beam:
Beam podium 1 Flavia Saraiva 2 Emma Larsson 3 Lisa Haemmerle
And the winning floor routine:
Floor podium 1 Flavia Saraiva 2 Emma Larsson 3 Marina Nekrasova
Full beam results / Full floor results / Videos
**Full results can be found here **
Related: 2016 Baku World Cup: Qualifications
Article: Bea Gheorghisor