While the women of Team USA were spending the Fourth of July weekend celebrating the nation’s birthday and preparing for Olympic Trials, many international gymnasts were preparing for Rio by competing in Europe.

Romanian Nationals

Despite suffering a fall during training that nearly led to a concussion just days before the competition in Cluj, Romania's Larisa Iordache won her fourth national all-around title.

Although she was not at full strength and missed a few days of training prior to the competition, Iordache still managed to qualify for bars, beam and floor finals. She won bars and earned silver on beam.

Fellow Rio contender Catalina Ponor also competed in Cluj while fighting through health issues. Ponor was hospitalized with a stomach virus before the competition and recovered enough in time to compete. She did not compete in the all-around, but made finals for her two signature events—beam and floor—and won both.

Iordache and Ponor will continue to battle for the single Romanian women's gymnastics Olympic team spot.

All-around final results | Event final results

Russian Cup

First-year senior Angelina Melnikova pulled off the upset in the all-around final at the 2016 Russian Cup by beating World Championships medalist Seda Tutkhalyan and 2012 Olympian Aliya Mustafina.

Melnikova posted solid performances on all four events, including a strong double twisting Yurchenko vault for a 15.05. Tutkhalyan also hit four for four, but couldn’t score well enough to reach the top of the podium.

Mustafina’s bronze was largely due to some uncharacteristic mistakes on bars. The 2012 Olympic uneven bars champion was solid on the other three events but fell near the end of her bar routine.

In event finals, 2012 Olympic vault bronze medalist Maria Paseka won vault, Natalia Kapitonova won bars, Melnikova won beam and Lilia Akhaimova won floor.

Following the competition, Russia named its temporary Olympic team as they wait on the status of Ksenia Afanasyeva, who is currently an alternate recovering from ankle surgery. The team as of now consists of Melnikova, Mustafina, Paseka, Daria Spiridonova and Tutkhalyan. The other alternates are Akhaimova and Kapitonova.

Mersin World Challenge Cup

Fan favorite Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan, who will compete in her seventh Olympic Games this year, had a good showing at the Mersin World Challenge Cup in Turkey.

41-year-old Chusovitina had two solid and difficult vaults, one of which was a big Produnova, to win the event. She also placed third on beam.

Catalina Escobar of Colombia, Tutya Yilmaz of Turkey and Göksu Üctas Sanli of Turkey rounded out the winners from bars, beam and floor, respectively.


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