Can Aliya Mustafina come back to win the all-around Gold at London 2012?

[Maofan7]

Following her ACL injury at the 2011 European Gymnastics championships, Aliya Mustafina is in a race against time to get herself both physically and competition fit in time for the London Olympics in 2012. It was recently announced that she will miss 2011 Worlds in October and won't be ready to compete again until at least December, and more realistically early 2012. Hence, can Mustafina come back in time to win the Gold in the all-around at the 2012 Olympics?

[Spareoom]

I voted too early to tell. There are a lot of variables at play, and Musty was already going to be at a disadvantage facing off against Komova and Grishina anyway, even before she hurt her knee.

I will say, though, if anyone CAN come back from this injury and contend for a gold medal in this amount of time, it's Musty. She has an iron will and an unending desire to win. If she goes out, it will be kicking and screaming.

[BigB08822]

I think she will be a contender. The biggest issue will be her Amanar. I think she will need it if we have a healthy Komova. She can probably compete with Weiber based on the bars differential assuming Weiber doesn't upgrade a lot between now and then. Grishina is another question mark but does she have an Amanar? Either way, only 2 will make it to the AA finals as is.

[judgejudy27]

If she cant do the Amanar when she comes back she is in big trouble. Even a hit Bross can beat her without the Amanar, I imagine it would be very close between the two hitting 4 for 4 if Mustafina doesnt have the Amanar. Bross would beat Mustafina for sure on beam, can score as high or higher on floor, will probably score lower but still quite well on bars.

[Buzz]

The olympics is a year away. Hopefully the she takes it easy with her recovery and if everything goes well she will for sure be a contender for the gold. I would love to see her and Komova duke it out for the AA gold. For sure if both and Grishina are all in tip top shape Russia will be hot favourite for the team gold. Well in the ladies competition anyway. The Russian male juniors have so far been a bit of a disappointment.

[bek]

If she cant do the Amanar when she comes back she is in big trouble. Even a hit Bross can beat her without the Amanar, I imagine it would be very close between the two hitting 4 for 4 if Mustafina doesnt have the Amanar. Bross would beat Mustafina for sure on beam, can score as high or higher on floor, will probably score lower but still quite well on bars.

Mustafina has another option other than her Amanar. She could clean up her other vault she debuted at worlds. It might be easier on her knee and with its 6.1 difficulty it will not give her as much of a disadvantage as she'd have with a DTY.

But I disagre with you that Aliya will "for sure" score lower than Bross on beam. While for the most part last year Mustafina was struggling a bit on beam. She really got it together at worlds and outscored Bross on beam in Team Finals, and the All Around. Now sure Bross had mistakes but the fact that Mustafina gave her very best beam routines when the pressure was on, and Bross has had issues not giving her best beam routine. Well this fact is relevent. (Honestly that's Mustafina's X factor versus both Bross and Wieber. (Wieber has had significant mistakes in the last 3 All Around competitions she's entered). Although Wieber's still new. Not to mention Mustafina was debuting some big beam upgrades and showing the ability to hit connections which she struggled with before. Her upgraded beam routine was going to be worth a ridiculous D score, a lot higher than Wiebers and higher than Bross's too. Now with the injury who knows. But the fact is that Mustafina wasn't even going to be conceding beam to Team Bross. Mustafina actually is a very good beam worker. Except for the dismount her beam routines have nice form/look to it. The main issue has been her hitting her acro connections but she's much better at that now than she was in the past. And her upgrades had 3 acro options, to ensure she could it.

And as for bars, Bross had some work to do there to catch up with Aliya there. Seeing as Mustafina was showcasing some connections on podium training that would make her bar routine worth 7.1. I actually think right now bars is the one event Aliya's better than Komova at. (Although Komova's Tkatchev is obviously much better) and Komova is certainly capable of some upgrades.

Its really hard to know Aliya may have a difficult time getting past both Komova/Grishina. But I do think the X factor for Aliya is that girl is a great competitor. Its hard to judge what kind of competitors Komova and Grishina (Wieber are).