Wednesday marked the first day of women’s competition at the 2015 European Youth Olympic Festival, taking place in Tblisi, Georgia. The format of the competition requires three gymnasts to compete for each country, with the first day counting as both team final and qualifying stage to the individual finals.
Daria Skrypnik lead the young Russian team towards the gold medal. In a three gymnasts competing/ two best scores being added up towards the team total, Daria’s scores counted on all four events. She impressed on bars (her pet event, where she currently holds the junior European title) with a difficult routine which opened with a Komova II to Pak to Chow (14.55/6.3) ; she also had one of the more interesting beam routines, with a round-off layout to two feet, aerial walk-over to illusion turn and Onodi to side aerial to artistic jump (14.300/5.8). Her team mates, Iliankova and Eremina also had overall good performances: Iliankova was better on bars (even edging Skrypnik by .1) while Eremina brought important points on vault and floor.
The silver medal went to Belgium, thanks to consistent all around performances from the duo Nina Derwael and Axelle Klinckaert, who ended up second and third respectively in the all around qualifying ranks. Derwael was superb on bars with clean Khorkina-type transitions and high releases (14.55/6.2). While Axelle brought the biggest score of her team on beam where she had a clean routine with aerial walkover, side somi, flic-layout to two feet, switch ring leap and double pike dismount (14.300/6.0). Julie Meyers was the third Belgian gymnast competing today and the highlight of her performance was the FTY vault (13.800).
Germany, with Tabea Alt, Florine Harder and Rebecca Matzon placed third. Their performance today was a mixed bag but in the end the good scores of Alt on bars and floor and of Harder on beam and bars together with two clean FTYs were enough for a place on the podium.
Olivia Cimpian, Ioana Crisan and Andreea Ciurusniuc, representing Romania, placed 4th. Unfortunately they didn’t manage to improve their country’s reputation on bars today after three consecutive routines each with a fall or a big mistake. The performances they will want to build on for morale for the next days came on beam and floor where Ioana Crisan and Olivia Cimpian, respectively, managed scores in the 14’s.
Italy, with Linari, Cereghetti and Maggio placed on the 5th place after a disappointing bars rotation and relatively simpler routines on beam and floor.
The competition continues tomorrow with the all around final. A list of the qualified can be found here.
Here are a few routines from today:
Skrypnik on bars:
Axelle Klinckaert on floor:
Olivia Cimpian on floor:
Florine Harder on floor:
Here are results of the top ten teams:
1 Russian Federation 28.500 (1) 29.200 (1) 27.800 (2) 27.400 (3) 112.900 2 Belgium 27.950 (2) 27.650 (2) 28.300 (1) 27.850 (1) 111.750 3 Germany 27.650 (4) 27.200 (3) 26.400 (6) 26.450 (6) 107.700 4 Romania 27.300 (7) 24.900 (11) 27.050 (3) 27.500 (2) 106.750 5 Italy 27.400 (6) 25.500 (6) 26.750 (4) 27.000 (5) 106.650 6 France 27.850 (3) 25.550 (4) 25.450 (12) 27.400 (3) 106.250 7 Great Britain 27.200 (8) 25.550 (4) 26.600 (5) 26.400 (7) 105.750 8 Switzerland 27.550 (5) 25.100 (8) 26.050 (8) 26.350 (8) 105.050 9 Ukraine 26.850 (10) 25.100 (8) 26.100 (7) 26.100 (10) 104.150 10 Hungary 26.800 (12) 25.000 (10) 25.750 (10) 25.100 (14) 102.650
Article: Bea Gheorghisor
Cover Photo: 2015 EYOF of Facebook