'Dong expressed his willing to rejoin the national team and we decided to give him go-ahead after discussions,' so the Chinese nationalk coach Huang said on a press conference recently. Retired after the Ninth Chinese National Games in Guangzhou, 2001, the 26-year-old Dong made his comeback in his hometown Tianjin after the Spring Festival in 2003. Huang went to Tianjin to watch Dong's training recently before recalling him for national duty.
'He still kept himself on a pretty high level in training,' Huang said. 'I think he will have a big chance to win the rings title in Taegu.'

100 YEARS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Birthday of the World Championships is the year 1903 From 14th to 18th August 1903 the Frensh men Cazalet initiated the first “International Tournament” of men’s gymnastics in Antwerp and 4 countries participated in the tournament: Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. From the 10th tournament in 1934 in Budapest on, where for the first time also women took part, the tournament was called “World Championship” and every former tournament was put on this level afterwards. So the upcoming Championships from 16th to 24th August 2003 are the 37th champs for men and the 28th champs for women.

Finally in Athens will be all together 98 women and 98 men. Such an Olympic ticket can only be won in the all-around competition. A really difficult task for specialists like the Slovenians Petkovsek (parallel bars) and Pegan (parallel bars and high bar), the Austrian Zimmermann (pommel horse, vault), the specialist on the still rings van Gelder (NED) or the artist on the horse Alexandersson (ISL).

For awarding the gymnastic queen in the all-arounds it would be nice if actually a “woman” dominates over the biomechanical advantages of the youngsters.
Svetlana Khorkina, titleholder, gives her sport a great aesthetical chance to do so.

The 24-year old diva from Russia, who takes part at World Championships for the 8th time, could win her third all-around title (after 1997 and 2001) … if one of her many strong challengers doesn’t take the chance.

To give a forecast for the men’s all-around is similar to a lottery, above all because Jordan Jowtschew (BUL), Marian Dragulescu (ROM) and Ioan Sibiu (ROM) will apply for the title as well as the ambitious local Blaine Wilson and the in Gent 2001 unlucky Paul Hamm. What abilities has the sad Vice-World Champion Ivan Ivankov, who was beaten in Gent by the 15-year old Feng Jing?
Not to forget the Chinese with Li, Xiaopeng, Yang, Wei (2nd in Sydney) and junior Liang, Fuliang in their team.
At the moment hard to value are the experiences Russians with Olympic winner Alexei Nemov, former World Champion Nikolai Krukov or Alexei Bondarenko. Vice-World Champion of 2001, Ivan Ivankov, will not perform a whole all-around competition because of an injury.

MEN's TEAM QUALIFICATION

The U.S. men won the preliminaries in the World Gymnastics Championships on Sunday, serving notice they're no longer the doormats they've been the past two decades.
The men would like to build on their finish, too. Fortunately for them, it was a lot more solid then the women's.
Rebounding after a rocky start, they let everyone know they're not the same guys who haven't won a team medal at the Olympics since Bart Conner and his Golden Gang in 1984. They finished prelims with 227.743 points, almost seven-tenths of a point ahead of second-place Japan.
After struggling through the floor exercise, their first event, the U.S. men found more trouble on the pommel horse. Blaine Wilson peeled off of it, and Morgan Hamm landed his dismount on his head.
But Brett McClure settled the team with a solid pommel horse routine, and the Americans went into full show-off mode. They didn't score anything lower than a 9.2 the rest of the way, and were the only team to finish in the top 10 in every event.
The team of China, the gold medalists at the Sydney Olympics, was third and Romania was fourth. Perennial powerhouse Russia was in sixth.
The most stunning finish was Belarus, who faltered after losing a gymnast to an Achilles' tendon injury midway through Saturday night's competition. The world champs not only missed the team finals, they missed an Olympic spot by just 0.012 points...behind the lucky Germans on 12!

Belarus won't get to defend its world title, and is barely hanging on to a spot for Athens. The Belarussians lost a gymnast to an Achilles injury midway through Saturday night's competition, and they dropped to ninth Sunday with another round of teams to go.
The German team had a disaster not only on high bar, but also on parallel bars and pommel horse (219,132) and fall down behind Japan, Romania, Canada and Spain on a temporary fifth place...
First the athletes of coach Andreas Hirsch had no hopes, to get an Olympic ticket for Athens, but than the defending titleholder Belarus relapsed - no more chance for the Olympics.....?

Summary of the first Day
JAPAN - TEAM of 1st DAY in ANAHEIM ...
Japan reeled off a number of intricate routines to finish ahead of European champions Romania on the opening day of this Worlds.
Japan - placed fourth overall in the 2000 Sydney Olympics - had 227.046 points while Romania had 224.770 points in the men's qualifying competition.
Japan was led by Naoya Tsukahara, who had the best all-around score of the day with a 57.224 points after the six events.
'My floor routine was very good,' Tsukahara said. 'I am not sure how I will do in the finals, but my confidence is high right now.'

Romania is considered one of the favourites to medal in Anaheim after capturing the European title in Patras 2002.
Romania has built its team around Marius Urzica and Marian Dragulescu, who both hold Olympic and world titles, while Dan Potra is the reigning European all-around champion.
Urzica showed Saturday why he is the defending world champion in the pommel horse, winning the qualifying event with a superb score of 9.775 points.
The best Romanian was Dragulescu, who finished with an all-around score of 56.650.
In third was Olympic bronze medallist Russia (223.380 points) while Canada (220.617 points) sneaked into fourth. Spain (220.332 points) rounded out the top five.
The 2001 world champion Belarus struggled to 219.120 points and placed seventh, same problems had the German squad on sixth place!
Canada pulled off the biggetst surprise of the day, winnning their six-team qualification round and almost certainly booking a spot in the Athens Olympics. Canada finished with a 220.617 points in their group to place ahead Germany (219.132) which finished in 10th in the Sydney Olympics and ranked 13th in Ghent 2002.
'I am on cloud nine,' said Canada coach Tony Smith. 'We were under pressure and we exceeded expectations. Our guys are peaking at the right time. It's amazing.'

The Russian and Belarus teams suffered key achilles injuries on Saturday during the floor routines:
Belarus' Dimitri Kasparovich lost his footing and hurt his left Achilles, also Russia's Sergey Kohorokhordin, when he fell awkwardly. The status of both athletes is uncertain as they will undergo more tests Sunday to see if they are able to continue in the event.
The remainder of the men's teams compete on Sunday, including host USA and 2000 Olympic gold medallist China.

19-Aug: --MEN’S TEAM FINAL

CHINA REGAIN THEIR WORLD TITLE!
by Philippe Silacci / FUG
'This was a very exiting competition!'
The level of work was extraordinary but in the end there were two teams, who could sustain above 28 points on every piece of apparatus and that were the Chinese and the USA.
And even though the USA reached 29.00 on the Rings, this was not enough to surpass a team who on High Bar and P.Bars were untouchable.

Xing Aowei and Li Xiaopeng were the other two Chinese who featured on Pommel Horse and P.Bars and the Russians who shone were Nikolai Krukov, on Pommel Horse and Alexei Nemov on P.Bars and High Bar.
The Ukraine and Korea featured in Rings and Vault.
The Americans on Floor used one and 3/4 somersault forward and Arabian to enhance their Start Value and the Hamm twins finished their exercises on Floor with beautiful double straight somersault.
Although the Chinese line and ability on one handle puts them in a class of their own, Cazimir of France still presented the most interesting exercise- with his triple rear on one handle.
The combination of strength on Rings from Maltese to inverted crucifix and planches lower through to pull out were quite amazing. The dismounts saw a number of excellent double straight somersaults with full twists to secure landing.
The outstanding Vault of the competition was Naoya Tsukahara with triple twist presented by Yang Wei.
source: P.Silacci/fig
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