Patras, 24-April-2002:
In contrast to the situation in the junior’s field, in the men’s elite level no real favourite for the team title is within sight.
In today’s podium training the Russians once again presented themselves with a lot of instabilities. They will have to fight strongly for the gold medal against teams like Belarus (- without Ivan Ivankov), Ukraine and Romania. In addition to that, the fight for the following places will be as exciting and a few more teams will take part in it, e.g. France, Italy, also Latvia and Switzerland. This means for the German team that they would need a faultless competition to reach the planned rank 6...

- On vault Thomas Andergassen nailed the landing of his Tsukahara – double salto bw. tucked perfectly! Ronny Ziesmer, however, landed his “Roche“ quite low. Sven Kwiatkowski then again sticked the landing of his layout double-twisting Tsukahara.

 - On bars – first apparatus for Dmitri Nonin from Berlin – he started a bit insecure with his combination at the beginning of basket – ½ turn – basket – ½ turn, but improved afterwards.

- On high bar head coach Rainer Hansche has decided that Thomas Andergassen won’t start on this apparatus which means he won’t compete an all-around. The content of his routine ( only a picked Voronin as flight element) is not strong enough to support the team with it. He was replaced by Tom Neubert from Chemnitz who had presented one of the best routines on high- bar during the ECh- preparations. However, today he had a fall from the apparatus. “That sensitizes for the competition...!“, the rest of the team said. 

- Floor – very hard and difficult to get used to it - is the weakest apparatus of the German team. Here, Ronny Ziesmer presented the best routine. Andergassen showed his routine with a slightly decreased level of difficulty, Kwiatkowski went through his routine well.

- On pommel horse the Germans (after more than 4 hours in the competition venue!) looked a bit like they couldn’t take it anymore. Kwiatkowski, Nonin, Andergassen – all three of them mainly had problems with their dismounts, this will certainly improve during the competition. So Sven Kwiatkowski is the only German gymnast who competes a full all-around which means he will have the chance to qualify for the all-around final.

Coach Rainer Hanschke: “The team competition is absolutely the most important. We will fight for rank 6...!”

All in all, with the new modus of 3/3 – which means all scores will count – a very exciting competition can be expected, maybe more exciting than ever before in the history of the European Championships since 1994.