Top Three Essay

 

Comparing Rhythmic Gymnasts: The Best Gymnasts in the History of the Sport

Meghan Groot

Transactional English 30s

 

 

Intro

Although rhythmic gymnastics has not always been an Olympic sport, there is evidence that the disciplines involved in rhythmic gymnastics have been practiced for over 3500 years (fig-gymnastics.com, 2014). Since it became an Olympic sport, there have been many gymnasts from all over the world but I’m going to look at the top three best rhythmic gymnasts that the sport has ever seen. The three gymnasts being compared are Anna Bessonova, Evgenia Kanaeva and Daria Dmitrieva and they will be compared based on their career history, scores and achievements. All three of these gymnasts have made an impact on the sport and have contributed a lot not only to the rhythmic gymnastics community but to people and countries all around the world, which is why these are three of the most important gymnasts.

 

Anna Bessonova

            The first gymnast being compared is Anna Bessonova. Anna was born in the Ukraine in 1984 and started her gymnastics career when she was 5 years old. She trained at the Deriugins School with a few other notable gymnasts and in 1994 became a part of the national team (annabessonova.com, 2011). This is a big success for Bessonova because it usually takes gymnasts more than 5 years of experience to make the national team. Anna became the leader of the Ukrainian National team in 2003 but decided to end her career in rhythmic gymnastics in 2010. In an interview with NSC Olimpiyskiy in Kiev, Anna stated that she was planning on leaving in 2008 after the Beijing Olympics but ended up competing in one more competition before making her final decision. She also mentioned that even though her career has ended she continues to coach young girls in the Ukraine and even holds classes all over the world.

 

            Bessonova has competed in many of competitions over her career and has won herself quite a few awards. In Anna’s biography of her website (annabessonova.com, 2011) she mentions the main titles she has won over her 15 year career. One of her best moments is in 2003 when she won World Champion twice for her hoops and club finals. Anna almost won all-around but due to a drop in her ball routine she came second. Also in 2003, she became a Triple European Champion in hoop, clubs and ribbon. Her hoop routine was to a song from the ballet Swan Lake and is still one of the best routines that has ever been choreographed. In 2005 Anna was a six time silver medalist during the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in all-around, ball, hoop, ribbon and club finals. She was competing against two of the world best known gymnasts and was 0.650 behind the gymnast ahead of her, Olga Kapranova, in the finals. Anna finally won all-around gold at the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in 2007 and everyone in the gymnastics community was expecting this from her since her second place placements at the previous two championships (annabessonova.com, 2011). In 2008 Anna won 15 medals just from World Cup events including the Kiev Cup (all-around gold), LA Lights (all-around gold) and Miss Valentine (all-around gold). A silver all-around medal was also won during the European Championships that year. Anna’s last year of competing was in 2009 where she won gold for the all-around at the Kiev Cup. As many as this is, these aren’t even all of her awards that she has won.

 

            For the amount of time that Anna has been competing she has been through many Code of Points changes and scoring/ judging changes. For those who don’t know the rhythmic gymnastics rules are all written in a book called the Code of Points and every four years, in the year of the Olympics, the Code of Points changes. This means that the way the gymnasts are being marked and judged changes every four years. It started out will being marked on a 10.00 point system then a 20.00 point system, then a 30.00 point system and now it’s back at a 20.00 point system(fig-gymnastics.com, 2014). Anna has been through all of these different systems and has adapted her routines to work with the changing code. In Athens in 2004 when Anna acquired a bronze medal with an all-around score of 106.700 the 30.00 point system was being used. Altogether Anna was 13.300 points away from an all-around individual score but her individual routine scores were not good enough to win her gold. For her ball routine she scored 26.525, hoop 26.500, ribbon 26.725 and clubs being her highest with a 26.950. These scores are okay for Anna’s ability although she was expected to get higher scores because of her consistent wins in 2008.

 

Evgenia Kanaeva

            Evgenia Kanaeva is a Russian gymnast who was born in 1990 and started rhythmic gymnastics at the age of 6. Since she was little, Evgenia was always a very determined and hardworking gymnast. In an interview, one of her previous coaches says that she “remembers the days when Evgenia would remain in the hall already after all of the kids went home, practiced long hours while her grandmother was waiting for her granddaughter in the cool, dark corridor.” (r-gymnastics.com, 2012) All that extra hard work paid off for Kanaeva when she was offered to train at The School of Olympic Reserve in Moscow and then with Gazprom, one of Russia best training schools, all by the age of thirteen. Also at this age Evgenia competed in the World Cup championships and won all-around gold in the junior categories. From this point on, her career skyrocketed, leading to many wins and titles and even becoming the first rhythmic gymnastics to have two Olympic gold medals (2008-Beijing, 2012-London). In 2012 Evgenia announced that she is not sure about what her future looks like in terms on competing but “any moment when she recovers and decides to come back, is for us the greatest happiness!” says Coach Irina Viner (rsport.ru, 2014)

 

            For many reasons people will say that Kanaeva is one of the most successful gymnasts in the history of the sport. After all, she has won many titles, including 17 world champion titles, two-time Olympic champion (reuters.com, 2012) and the first gymnast to ever win a three-time European championship all-around (r-gymnastics.com, 2012). It all started in 2003 when Evgenia started doing lots of international competitions and started placing high up either winning the championships or becoming very close second. Next in 2007 at the European Championships Kanaeva won the all-around gold title while replacing an injured teammate and ended up winning gold at the World Championships in the same year. In 2008, not only did Evgenia win her first gold at the Olympic Games in Beijing as the youngest gymnast in the finals but she also won another all-around gold at the Grand Prix, World Cup and was named the Absolute Champion of Russia. After this year Evgenia became one of the three gymnasts to win all the major Grand Slam titles. 2009 was the year Evgenia scored 4 European Championship gold medals and won 9 gold medals at the World Games. Kanaeva was one of the first gymnasts that was coming out and winning so many titles within a short amount of time. No one had ever seen so much success from one gymnast. On top of all those awards Evgenia won 6/6 gold medals that could be won at the 29th World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships and at the 31st Championships it was Evgenia’s third consecutive year winning all-around gold which is another record that hasn’t been done by many gymnasts.

 

            Throughout her career with all the medals and title that Evgenia has won, this must mean she has been getting very high scores. In Beijing 2008 with the 20.00 point system, Kanaeva won 75.50 points out of a possible 80.00 perfect score and was ahead of the silver medalist by 3.50 points. At this level of competition, it is difficult to win by such a large amount of points. After this year the Code of Points changed which meant that she has to adjust to the new 30.00 systems. At the Olympic games in London 2012 where Evgenia won gold all-around she scored 116.00 AA out of a possible 120.00.  Also, in 2011 at the Grand Prix in Czech Republic, Evgenia scored a perfect 30.00 points out of 30.00 points for her ribbon routine. This is a very difficult thing to do as it means that the routine was absolutely flawless. She was the first gymnast to do this out of the 30.00 point system.

 

Daria Dmitrieva

            Daria Dmitrieva had a short lived rhythmic gymnastics career but is favoured by many people. Daria was born in Russia in 1993 and started training in gymnastics when she was 8. She trained at Gazprom with Evgenia Kanaeva but didn’t start competing internationally until 2008. In that year won the championships for clubs in her category at the World Cup. This win along with two other gymnasts lead their school to be the best training school, ahead of the Deriugina School in the Ukraine (r-gymnastics.com, 2014). Daria replaced Alexandra Merkurova for the 2012 due to injury a few days before competition. After this competition Daria suffered an injury and had to get a major surgery on her ankle in early 2013. Daria hoped to be back on her feet and competing after the surgery but due to the slow rate of recovery, Daria was forced to announce retirement in 2013.

 

            Even though Daria didn’t have many years of competing she still made quite a few accomplishments. For starters she placed silver at the 2012 London Olympics, few points behind Kanaeva. This is impressive considering that she was replacing a gymnast on short notice. Before that though, in 2010 she won all-around bronze in the Grand Prix. This isn’t the most exciting accomplishment but considering her age (17) and the fact that she didn’t compete in many international competitions before this one, that is not a bad result. Her improvement is shown through her win in her category at the World Cup with her ribbon routine. In 2011 she did even better by winning all-around gold at the World Cup in her category and then a silver all-around award at the Grand Prix for this year. The next year was the year she won silver all-around in the Olympics and also brought her Grand Prix game up and won all-around champion in her categories. In the World Cup also for this year she scored herself all-around silver (r-gymnastics.com, 2014). By looking at these results and placements, you can tell that Dmitrieva has improved her skill by far and could have even been the next best gymnast if she hadn’t gotten injured. Just like Kanaeva, Daria is a natural born gymnast with lots of achievements to be proud of.

 

            Dmitrieva and Kanaeva have always been pretty close in terms of scoring and placements but when the London Olympics rolled around, the girls were winning by the slightest points. Daria scored a 114.50 at the Olympics, just 1.50 behind Kanaeva. She landed a near perfect score with her ribbon routine with a 29.100 out of a possible 30.00. Daria actually placed first in ribbon but kept a silver placement with her other routines, Kanaeva keeping the gold. Her clubs routine was scored with a 28.750, ball with a 28.350 ad hoop being her lowest, 28.300. Daria’s qualifying score for the Olympics was a mere 00.025 points ahead of her Olympic final score (sports-reference.com, 2014).

 

Conclusion

            The sport of rhythmic gymnastics has had many queens of the sport and many wallflowers that no one really notices. The three gymnasts above, Anna Bessonova, Evgenia Kanaeva and Daria Dmitrieva are all considered queens of the sport because of their career history, the achievements these girls have fulfilled and the scores and results these girls maintain. Out of the three, Kanaeva has the biggest reputation of being a success because of the amount of records she has set but all three gymnasts have made a huge mark on the sport.

           

           

 

 

Biography. (2011). <i>Новости</i>. from http://annabessonova.com/en

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Darya Dmitriyeva Bio, Stats, and Results. (n.d.). Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Retrieved October 1, 2014, from http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/dm/darya-dmitriyeva-1.html