My profile:
Max Rossi / Reuters
Pavlova competing on the beam for Russia during the World Gymnastics Championships in Denmark on Tuesday.
Despite the presence of Elena Zamolodchikova, a double gold-medalist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Russia's gymnasts finished a distant fourth behind the U.S. trailblazers
Their total score of 234.800 left them more than eight points adrift of the Americans, with China and Ukraine completing the top three on the leaderboard.
In a further sign of the times, none of the Russian gymnasts managed to qualify for either the uneven bars or the floor routine, the event in which Zamolodchikova had gained one of her two gold medals in Sydney.
To make matters worse, their highest qualifier for the all-around crown was Anna Pavlova in 15th place. Defending champion Chellsie Memmel of the United States tops the leader board.
Their disappointing exhibition had clearly rattled the team's confidence as the six-member squad hurried past reporters without responding to any questions.
Things went wrong from the beginning for the nation that once dominated the sport.
Pavlova and Zamolodchikova both picked up 0.1 point penalties for stepping out of the marked area on the floor during their first apparatus performance.
Banishing memories of their miserable start, the duo pulled off strong twisting somersaults to ease the tension in the Russian camp.
Next came the uneven bars.
With the self-styled "queen of the uneven bars" Svetlana Khorkina now retired, the current group of gymnasts failed to grab either the audience's or judges' imagination with its mediocre displays.
The highest score any of the team could muster was Polina Miller's 14.875.
Pavlova produced the highlight of the team's morning when she deftly showed off her balancing skills on the beam to score 15.525.
After drawing a blank at the 2005 World Championship in Melbourne, Russia desperately wanted to prove that it has made improvements over the past 12 months.
With less than two years to go before the Beijing Olympics, Tuesday's performance confirmed that they still have plenty of hard work to do.
One gymnast with Russian blood, however, is drawing gasps of appreciation from the crowd. Unfortunately, she happens to be competing for the United States.
Nastia Liukin is the daughter of 1988 Russian Olympic gold medalist Valery Liukin and 1987 world rhythmic titleholder Anna Liukin. Nastia probably mastered the art of performing flips and somersaults before she could walk properly.
"My parents tell me, when I was very young, I used to run around with a ribbon in my hand, throw it up in the air, then run out and do a cartwheel," Liukin, who was born in Moscow but raised in the United States, said recently in an interview.
She is the star of the U.S. team, which despite four wobbly displays on the balance beam, still leads in qualifying at the World Gymnastics Championships.
Liukin became the only woman in Aarhus to break the 16-point barrier under the new scoring system.
She floated between the bars with ease while performing four release maneuvers. Not even a step forward on the landing could detract from her breathtaking display, and she was duly awarded a score of 16.200.
Nastia won gold medals on the balance beam and uneven bars at her World Championships debut last year and would have been the front-runner for the all-around crown at these championships, had the elfin blonde not sustained an ankle injury that left her unable to compete on the uneven bars this week.
