A convincing Romanian victory
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At
first the team from Belarus for a short while took the lead on
their starting apparatus vault.
All
in all the Vice-World-Champion from Ghent presented a solid
competition although a standing out gymnast was missing in their
team.
No gymnast competed on all six apparatus, that means no gymnast
from Belarus will take part in the all-around final.
<<
After Silver in Bremen 2000 and silver at the worldchampionships
in Ghent 2001 - now the gold medal for Romania!
Congratulation! It was a high leveld competition!!
Russia
started together with the Romanians on floor.
Already there they couldn’t keep pace with the team which
placed 2nd at the last ECh. |
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Only
Alexei
Nemov
presented an outstanding performance on this apparatus with the
highest score of his team: 9.675. What a pity that in the end,
when he presented at the last apparatus high bar a routine with
really and truly 6 flight elements, he touched the mat with his
hands on his double-double dismount – well, that was that with
the participation in the EF!
On
pommel horse the Russian were quite weak then. There
the Romanians took the lead in the team ranking. No surprise as
they have such “support-phenomena” like Olympic- and
World-Champion Marius Urzica or Ioan Suciu in their team. No one
received a higher score than Urzica today: 9.825!! There already
their lead over the other teams was quite high and they even
managed to extend it on vault. World-Champion Dragulescu
presented a brilliant handspring-double tucked fw. with ˝ turn,
he even managed to go into a layout position quite early and had
to take only a very small step on the landing (9.750). Until the
end the Romanians were in the lead and no other team could catch
them up... |
Nemov
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This
time France hasn’t been a too serious opponent and
suffered already a nervous start on pommel horse. They also won’t have
a gymnast in the all-around final and in the end of this team
competition the bronze medal winner from Bremen 2000 ended up on rank 4.
Not
Ukraine, but the German gymnasts established themselves again like two
years ago on the 5th rank!
On
rings they
started with steady routines - although with a not too high level of
difficulty. It seems, the strength-combination of Sven Kwiatkowski cross
- pushed up to support scale wasn’t acknowledged by the judges, this
lowered his start value by 2 tenth of a point (his final score: 8.912).
Thomas
Andergassen (SV 9.8) managed to improve the team result slightly with
his score of 9.162 and the best gymnast was Ronny Ziesmer from Cottbus
who reached the score of 9.412. At this point of time the men around
head coach Rainer Hanschke were placed on rank 8.
Surprisingly
on the usually weak apparatus vault the
Germans managed to improve their team‘s position. Sven Kwiatkowski
almost managed to stick the landing of his layout double-twisting
Tsukahara (SV 9.7/ final score 9.362).
Andergassen
had to make a slight hop on the landing of his Tsukahara- double salto
bw. (9.512). Ronny Ziesmer, however, again was quite low on the landing
of his handspring – double tucked fw. (“Roche“). But suddenly the
team had reached the 4th place!!!
On
bars the
German team presented their relatively “easy“ routines very steady:
Kwiatkowski
(SV 9.3) started with 8.775, Andergassen followed with a start value of
9.5 and a final score of 8.95. Berlin’s Dmitri Nonin, who had always
problems in training with his start combination of basket – ˝ turn,
presented a brilliant routine in the competition which brought the team
the good score of 9.237.
On
high bar the team had to tremble once
again when Sven Kwiatkowski almost missed his Kovacs with 1/1 turn –
it looked like he caught it only with his fingernails! Quite strictly
judged, he only received the score of 9.137 for this routine.
The
highlight for the Germans was presented by ECh-newcomer Tom Neubert who
showed a routine with the start value 10.0. He presented a clean Kovacs
and managed to earn bonus points through his many el-grip combinations
and finally nailed the landing of his layout double-double. The score of
9.562 was the highest one for the German team today and secured him a
spot in the EF. Congratulations for this! Dmitri Nonin might have lost
one tenth of a point when he was too close to the bar at his Kovacs. He
then had to make a slight step on his double-double dismount.
Nonetheless it was a solid routine which brought the score of 9.275 to
the team result.
Often
floor has been a weak apparatus for the Germans – especially
also here in Patras due to the hard characteristics of it – but this
time they presented a great performance. Kwiatkowski had to step out of
bounds once, but the scores of 9.262 (Andergassen) and 9.337 (Ziesmer)
secured a possible 5th rank.
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Thomas Andergassen
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However,
it had to be defended on pommel horse: Nonin
started solidly (SV 9.8/ final score 9.237).
Andergassen
then had slight foot mistakes and received the score of 9.237 (SV 9.9).
Then Sven Kwiatkowski had planned to present a routine with the start
value of 10.0 but made a mistake at his flops on one pommel. Due to that
a special requirement wasn’t acknowledged by the judges and that meant
a deduction of 0.7 points from the start value and missing bonus points
of 0.5 points: Final score 8.837. A pity, but nonetheless and although
nobody had expected it:
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Happy Germans
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The
German team again confirmed the 5th place of the last ECh and
even left a team like Ukraine behind them.
The two gymnasts from Chemnitz Sven Kwiatkowski (all-around) and Tom
Neubert (high bar) have earned their spots in the finals on Saturday and
Sunday. This is a quite surprising result!!
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Eckhard Herholz
Infos: Jens Milbradt
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Host
Greece presents on his own website to the first time at
European Artistic Gymnastics 
