Opinion: Russia Needs Maria Paseka

Maria at the Olympics.

The sorry state of Russian gymnastics, at the current time, means that Russia needs Maria Paseka more than anything now. Maria Paseka is far from being an elegant and polished gymnast but what she lacks in execution she makes up in difficulty. As many of you might remember that she trains the very difficult Amanar vault and while she isn't consistent with it, it is a risk the Russian national team needs for now. Russia took the risk at the 2012 Olympics and it paid off when Maria came home with a Bronze medal on vault.

Maria is the Russian gymnast that blew up Twitter with her looks. During Team Final men and women were captivated by her beauty and tweeted their admiration. Sadly for her she was only able to barely land her Amanar vault keeping her team in contention.

Maria is back in training and this time she is working on a second vault, a Rudi vault. The Rudi is a difficult vault to explain so I shall leave that for another day. It is the vault popularized by Alicia Sacramone who was known for performing it throughout her career. It is worth above 6.0 which makes it a very rewarding vault if a gymnast can land it. Below is an video of Maria training it and it appears as though she is very close to landing it on regular surface.

Vaulting isn't just the reason that the Russian team needs Maria, it is the floor that she could be critical. The Russians have a very weak floor lineup, with Aliya and Vika coming out of surgeries they are likely going to be absent from floor. Ksenia Afanasyeva is definitely out of Worlds and that leaves very few options. They have two promising new faces in Alla Sosnitskaya and Maria Kharenkova but both are fresh and need more time to upgrade their floor routines to compete with the international stars.

This is where Maria comes in, she was shown training some of the hardest tumbling passes in recent videos. She does a double layout stretched with ease, a double arabian tucked with command and can land an arabian double piked! I can't think of any other Russian who has ever trained that tumbling pass. On top of that she has dance elements that are good - a double turn with leg held at 90°.

The potential is there and if she can convert on vault and floor at the Russian Cup she is sure to make the Russian national team for Worlds. Do you guys agree with my opinion? Let me know and if you disagree tell me why.

-Via Alyssia Spaan on YouTube.