Thursday, 25-Oct-2001

- GENT-DAILY REPORT (1)

Before Men's Podium Training… (Report from podium training to follow Thurdsay evening)

From Ghent: Eckhard Herholz and Reinhard Linder

When podium training starts today, the apparatus must be in place and the arena Topsporthal Vlanderen must be finished! Hard to believe when you see how much work is left to do only 24 hors before training starts…
"Don't panic, all is going according to plan", says Hans Teklenburg, who is in charge of coordinating the work done by Janssen&Fritsen, official apparatus suppliers of the World Championships, and is just lending the final touches to the floor mat. Even the company's boss Jac Janssen took off his jacket and joined in, checking the progress on each individual apparatus.

Jac&Mario Janssen Last check of high bar

J&F employee Josephus van der Straaten summed in up in a nutshell: "J&F is always on time. Never a minute early, never a minute late!"

The competition hall, which is also used as a large track and field arena, has been furnished with stands that almost

Jac Janssen … last pointers on floor

go up to the podium for this event..

Pegases Festival:		During our visit, the Pegases was still covered, but it will be used for the first time in official podium training today and then, on Sunday, it will make its debut at the World Championships. The new vaulting table replaces the old vaulting horse for men and women. <<< The "Pegases" allows the development of technique and difficulty of vaults. Both Ioannis Melissanidis (GRE) and Thomas Zimmermann (AUT) have announced that they plan to debut new vaults. Great expectations …!!!

"These Worlds are going to be great. We are expecting a sell-out crowd which will provide a fantastic atmosphere", some of the members of the organising committee of the Vlaamse Turnliga rave and can clearly hardly wait for Worlds to begin. The international press centre is also still being set up and a certain amount of imagination is needed to think of it as fully functional. Next to the future press centre there is a separate area devoted to apparatus demos.

Getting ready for the J&F seminar

The "90% junior
pommel horse"

Handstand rocker

There will be a special forum devoted to training aids created by Janssen&Fritsen in coo-operation with renowned coaching specialists before and during the World Championships. Aids like the "90% pommel horse for juniors", which was built especially to accommodate the narrow shoulder of junior gymnasts or a rocker like apparatus which helps learning to stabilise handstands and much more… These training aids will be demonstrated by Dieter Hofmann. Hofmann served as head coach for the silver medal winning GDR team in 1988 and now works in Liestal, Switzerland.

VIP area from the outside and the inside…

A VIP area is being set up in front of the arena. The huge white tent, which looks like a circus tent, will welcome the celebrities of these World Championships, guests of honour, representatives of the 68 nations as well as dignitaries from the world of sports and the region in Belgium. Looking at the workers performing almost acrobatic feats while setting up the tent, it is hard to imagine what it will look like when it is finished.

Teams training at full speed
The participants are nearly unanimous in their praise of the excellent training conditions offered in the 6 large halls of the Expo in Ghent.
Small problems, like the adjustment of the uneven bars, are immediately solved.

Zone 0 is for athletes only…!

<< The Romanian team, favourites for the gold, with Andreea Radcuan arrives for training

Supervised by Octavian Belu, the Romanian women's team worked the apparatus with their usual professionalism. Belu watched from the sidelines, his arms folded, he hardly needed to give advice or spot them. This is the team that, apart from Russia, is surely the top favourite for the competition.

Tough security checks rightly keep the athletes away from prying media representatives at this stage. The stars and their not so famous gymnast colleagues can be spotted wandering around in the halls or near the entrance where food and drinks are served. This area, however, resembles a vast hall at a train station and the whole atmosphere seems a little lacklustre – well, it is perhaps to be expected with mass feeds for more than 800 people!

The German team arrives for training

<< Jordan Jovchev - cautiously optimistic since he is not totally injury free

The German men skipped their morning training session –they had been scheduled for one hour only- on the last day before podium training, but made up for it by working very hard in their 2 ½ hour session in the evening.

Valeri Belenki bumped into Oksana Chusovitina – the four-time world champion competing in his 11^th (!!!) Worlds and the 25-year-old who won the gold on floor in Indianapolis in 1991 (!!!) in her sixth Worlds! Genuine gymnastics history… especially considering that Belenki and Chusovitina were both members of the last Soviet team at the 1991 Indianapolis World Championships.
According to coach Svetlana Kuznetsova, the Uzbek even hopes to contend for a medal on vault: "Oksana has to vaults with 9,8 SV. A handspring-front layout with a full twist and a layout Tsukahara with 1 ½ twists as her second vault. We definitely want to make the final with these, and why not a medal…?"
Not an easy task considering Oksana and her team mate Alexandra Gordeyeva (21) are competing without a team. For Gordeyeva this is her fourth Worlds, she made her debut at the event in Sabae in 1995. Both come from a country that has a host of problems other than good training conditions for its gymnastics team.

Valeri and Oxana

The German women were happy with their training, which went off without any problems, but were feeling a little tired and washed out. Their podium training session will be on Friday.

German women on their way to lunch

Mit Spannung erwartet auch Österreichs 'zig-facher Staatsmeister Thomas Zimmermann seine 10.WM (!). Große Hoffnung legt er auf seinen Supersprung, den er als Neuheit beim Technischen Komitee eingereicht hat: Ein Überschlag-Salto vorwärts- halbe Drehung- Salto rw. soll es werden, faktisch ein doppelter Cuervo. Aber - stehen, und auf den Punkt bringen, muss man das Ding eben, um als "Zimmermann" in die Annalen der Turngeschichte eingehen zu können!

"Zimmi": "My 10^th Worlds but I'm not done yet…!"

Austria's multiple national champion Thomas Zimmermann can also hardly wait to get started on his 10^th (!) Worlds. He has high hopes for his new vault that he has submitted to the MTC: handspring – front tuck – half turn into a back tuck, in theory a double Cuervo. But- for it to be named the "Zimmermann" he will have to successfully compete it!

The Chinese men, still totally unknown at the moment, showed perfect discipline in their training, but no top-level difficulty yet that would hint at their potential. We'll see…

Little excitement to be reported elsewhere, apart from a few injuries. Belgian champion Sigrid Persson unfortunately injured her foot and the Austrian coach has his hand in cast after a judgment error while spotting a gymnast!

Men's podium training starts today (report this evening), women's on Friday. Podium training should offer a more complete insight into the teams' potential.