Floor Gold for Lauren Mitchell at World Gymnastics 2010
Lauren Mitchell, the Australian gymnast has finally claimed the floor gold title as the World Gymnastics 2010 came to an end. The 19-years old girl had been twice denied the title during last year’s World championships, however, this time she succeed in
producing a score of 14.833 to bag the floor title in Rotterdam on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ana Porgras from Romania made it to the beam title, Feng Zhe from China claimed gold in parallel bars and Thomas Bouhail from France remained victorious on vault. Zhang Chenglong made it to win the high bar title as no one competed from Britain
side.
Beth Tweddle from England, the last year’s floor title holder, won gold medal in the uneven bars on Saturday for the second time in her career, however, the girl remained failed to qualify for floor final to be held on the next day and hence could not defend
the title. From rest of the rivals, no one could score above 15 points, and Mitchell, the last performer of the event edged out Aliya Mustafina from Russia and Diana Chelaru from Romania by a margin of mere 0.067 points.
Earlier this month, Mitchell had won four commonwealth titles for Australia in Delhi; however, the world championships gold had previously eluded her.
Russian gymnast Mustafina had began the weekend with an outside chance of bagging 6 gold medals out of 6 events for having won all-round final and been a part of the country’s victory in the team finals held on Thursday. However, the 16-years old girl only
saw a succession of gold-medal chances slipping through her grasp. This culminated in a fall from the beam on Sunday’s competition. But the gymnast managed to bag three other individual apparatus finals.
On the vault, Bouhail from France posted a score of 16.449 and succeeded in beating Anton Golotsutskov from Russia by less than a tenth of a mark. While on parallel bars, Feng from China led one-two with a score of 15.966 points, beating Teng Haibin, his
team-mate’s 15.616.
For beam title, the 16-years old Porgras pushed Rebecca Bross from America and Deng Linlin from China into joint silver. She scored 15.366 against the 15.233 depicted by the duo. In high bars, the spectacular performance of Zhang deprived the 24-years old
leading light Dutchman Epke Zonderland of the host nation’s gymnastics programme, of gold to end the event. Depicting a marvellous score of 16.166, Zhang outscored Zonderland by 0.133 points. Fabian Hambuechen, the German superstar, eventually ended up at
the third position.
For British gymnasts, all three medals at the tournament came on Saturday; this was perhaps the most successful single day in a world level event in the history of British gymnastics. The uneven bars gold won by Tweddle was followed by a silver medal by
Louis Smith in the pommel horse competition. Dan Purvis ended up earning a bronze medal in the floor finals.
Earlier this week, in team performances depicted by British men and women contingent, the results were rather disheartening as they both ended up at seventh position. Purvis, who had been GB’s top all-around competitor eventually ended at fifth place in
men’s all around final competition held on Friday.
With the performance at the world championships event, both British men’s and women’s teams have ensured their participation to the next stage of Olympics qualification at 2011 world championships. The event would take place in Tokyo. Out of Tokyo competition,
the top eight teams would automatically qualify for the 2012 London Olympics. However, the remaining eight would be left to take part into the final qualification tournament.
While qualifying for the finals at world championships event, the team Britain had finished at fourth position, however, they could not keep the bar of their performance high by the finals event. Now, if the English athletes overcome the potential mistakes
they made at Rotterdam, there are chances for them to ensure their participation into the Olympics event, else, the bright era of English gymnasts would end soon.
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