Montage Monday: The Aliya Mustafina Edition

Aliya Mustafina

Sunday, September 30th was Aliya Mustafina's 18th birthday! Aliya has quite a few titles to her name - most decorated gymnast of the quad, most decorated Russian gymnast at the Olympics, most decorated Russian athlete at the 2012 Olympics, and the list goes on and on. I must admit that I admire Aliya's tenacity. After an ACL tear, she refused to give up and now has an Olympic gold medal, among other medals, to her name. This Montage Monday is dedicated to her :)

Let's start with a pre-London preview. This great video by uswntgymfan (on twitter, youtube, and tumblr) made an Aliya Mustafina London 2012 preview - Will London be her time? It's perfect. It starts with all her nicknames and amazing stats, then goes to a training montage, and highlights her successes at 2012 European Championships.

Watch here or below:


uswntgymfan has made quite a few montages of Aliya. So I strongly recommend that you check out her channel. There's one that she made specifically for her birthday sort of chroniciling her uneven bars victory.


Aliya Mustafina: Golden by uswntgymfan



kiwigymnast16 also made an excellent montage. It's a great piece that has someone speaking throughout and each word perfectly describes Aliya persevering and becoming an Olympic Champion. The message? No Pain, No Gain.

Watch it here or below:


And, what would a Montage Monday be without a video from Chris Saccullo? Here's a great montage of Aliya. I thought the order he did things in was really interesting - rather then just going in order - 2010 Worlds, 2011 injury, 2012 comeback, it's kind of like a continuous stream of the Olympics with flashbacks to the past. It makes you stop and remember how Aliya took the gymnastics world by storm in 2010 and how she managed to come back in time from an ACL injury. This girl is truly amazing!

Watch here or below


Some other videos to check out:
These videos are all great, I just didn't want to make the page load slowly or I feel like you may have seen them already linked on other sites.

Aliya Mustafina & Aleksander Aleksandrov / Wonderwall - Recently, there was a shuffling of the leadership on the Russian team. Aliya's personal coach, Alexandrov, was also the team's head coach and some believed that this was a conflict of interest. His position was taken up by Evgeniy Grebenkin (the man seem high-fiving Aliya in all the previous montages when she gets off of bars). This montage shows the relationship between the two including some audio clips of Alexandrov calling Aliya his daughter.

I've missed a lot of uswntgymfan's work but she has 2 other videos of Aliya. One focusing just on London 2012 AA performances and one called Inspire. Aliya's an amazing gymnast and young woman. I'm sure she has inspired many. Check out uswntgymfan's youtube channel.

Lastly, there's a video going around of Russian gymnastics at the 2012 Olympics. I love the montage and I also love the song (Alex Clare - Too Close). It features all 5 of the gymnasts and goes really well with the music. If you love Russian gymnastics or gymnastics in general make sure to check it out here or below:


Hope you enjoyed Aliya's Montage Monday :) Which was your favorite video? Any other Aliya montages that you love?