21. März 2003  
Cottbus / GER  
Artistic Gymnastics

Qualification at the World Cup in Cottbus

Stephan Zapf (GER)
3rd of pommel horse
qualification

The qualification at the 27th Tournament of Masters in Cottbus has ended now. Most of the participants – altogether 44 - started on pommel horse, the least participants started on women’s vault (21). This qualification on vault was won by Oksana Chussovitina.
Elizabeth Tweddle (GBR) took the lead on uneven bars in the qualification.
As expected, the pommel horse World and Olympic champion Marius Urzica (ROM) has reached the first place in the qualification on his specialist apparatus (9.712) followed by fellow gymnast Ioan Suciu and Stephan Zapf (GER). Roman Zozulia (UKR) on floor and Jordan Jovchev on rings will go into tomorrow’s finals as best gymnasts on floor and rings each.

Results
Qualification men
Qualification women

Opening ceremony of the 27th Tournament of Masters

From Cottbus report Sonja Schmeißer, Eckhard Herholz, Lisa Worthmann, Sascha Herholz und Niels Bohl (Fotos)

In the second part of the qualification Leszek Blanik from Poland secured himself the 1st place in the qualification on men`s vault with two very good vaults. The qualification on parallel bars was won by Yernar Yerimbetov from Kazachstan who presented a difficult routine. In the high-bar qualification Aliaz Pegan from Slovenia presented a brilliant routine with his “Pegan” and a triple salto dismount which easily secured him the first rank in the qualification.
In the 2nd part of the women`s qualification it was time for Brazilian Samba – On balance beam Daniele Hypolito reached rank one while on floor her fellow gymnast Daiane Dos Santos presented a brilliant routine through which she ended up on the first place.

Daniele Hypolito (BRA)

Women -vault and uneven bars
Already at the beginning it became interesting for the audience: Olympic champion Yelena Zamolodchikova (RUS) – she fell on her first vault. For a while Daniele Hypolito from Brazil took the lead. Title holder Elizabeth Tweddle (GB) presented her uneven bars routine very well and Junior European champion Anna Pavlova from Russia showed a technically brilliant and beautiful uneven bars routine. She reminded the audience a bit of the legend on this apparatus Maxi Gnauck.
One of the best apparatus of Oksana Chussovitina (UZB) is vault, the experienced gymnast performed her vaults with a lot of power. Right after her started Anna Pavlova and it was interesting to compare those two different kinds of gymnasts. Anna had won the vault final at the World Cup in Paris, she certainly is one of the future stars of gymnastics.

Xing Aowei (CHN) - 4th of qualification on floor

Men - floor, pommel horse, rings:
On pommel horse Marius Urzica (ROM) started with a World class performance. He reached 9.712 points – this has been the highest score of the first competition day in Cottbus.
On floor two experienced floor gymnasts (Zozulia and Suciu) took the lead, behind them Manuel Campos from Portugal reached rank 3. One of the favourites Jordan Jovchev fell and only reached the 17th place. Jeffrey Wammes, the brother of the Dutch gymnast Gabriela Wammes, only shortly missed the final – he ended up on rank 9. He has just made the move from junior to senior competitions and certainly will make his way in future.
With a great routine Jordan Jovchev showed to everyone that he aims to win the rings final in Cottbus. Also Dimosthenis Tambakos from Greece presented a good routine and will be seen again in the final.
Men - vault, parallel bars, high bars
In the second part of the qualification several high-quality vaults could be seen in the men`s qualification. The Polish World championships silver-medallist Leszek Blanik tried the very difficult handspring- double salto fw. piked and secured himself the first place. As usually with a lot of speed and quick rotations Kanukai Jackson from Great Britain once again pleased the audience with his very clean handspring- double salto fw. tucked. After the first successes of Egypt on rings could already be seen in recent years, here in Cottbus Raouf Abdel Karim Ali surprisingly reached the final with two clean vaults (handspring- double salto fw. tucked and Tsukahara double twist).
On parallel bars Yernar Yerimbetov from Kazachstan secured himself the first place with a difficult and clean routine. Also Mitja Petkovsek from Slovenia and Marius Urzica from Romania presented good routines and reached the ranks 2 and 3.
In the high bar qualification many falls from the apparatus could be seen. Aliaz Pegan from Slovenia, however, presented his beautiful and difficult routine very well, including his “Pegan” and a triple salto dismount. For this routine he received the score of 9.675 and reached the first place. France once again presented itself as a nation with very good high bar gymnasts, Cédric Guille and Yann Cucherat ended up on rank 2 and 3. With a solid and well-presented routine Germany´s Stephan Zapf reached the final on rank 4.

Ludivine Furnon (FRA)

Women - beam and floor The 2nd part of the qualification was a big success for Brazil. As well on balance beam as also on floor the gymnasts from South America reached the first place.
As a late starter in the balance beam final Daniele Hypolito presented her beautiful and difficult routine safely and overtook trough this all gymnasts which had started before her. In general a lot of falls could be seen in the balance beam qualification. The score of 8.5 was enough for Oana Ban from Romania to reach the final on rank 8 (she fell on her double salto bw. tucked 1/1 turn). Elena Gomez from Spain presented herself well as well on beam as also on floor, on both apparatus she reached the 2nd place. The audience liked her speedy routine with beautiful pirouettes very much. Also the acrobatic elements, including 2 1/2 twists- salto fw. full turn) worked well for her today. Also the beautiful ballet-like floor routine of the young Russian gymnast Anna Pavlova was liked by the audience. France`s Ludivine Furnon stepped out of bounds and ended up on rank 13. Therefore her extraordinary and elegant floor routine will unfortunately not be seen again in the final.