GB women’s gymnastics team falls short of expectations
The performance depicted by Britain’s women’s gymnastics team at world championships final was rather disappointing, amid the costly errors the team finished at seventh position. Despite of having performed remarkably well to reach the final, confidence
of the team could not help it avoiding the initial mistakes on the beam where Nicole Hibbert and Imogen Cairns both fell off.
Beth Tweddle, the team lead of the Britain side though was disappointed upon the performance of her athletes, but she could not come up with hard words for that. After the event, while talking to the media she said that despite of having a shaky start in
the beginning, they had proved that they were a nation which deserved to be placed in top eight.
The world championship ended after Russia winning the gold for the first time in the history of Rotterdam. The team US stood second while Chinese contingent ended with a third position. Fulfilling the expectations of the spectators, the three leading position
of the women’s event were bagged by the athletes from dominating super powers. The results brought the team GB into the world of realism, who, amid its performance in the pre-final, was expecting to bag a medal out of the event.
Britain’s women gymnastics team was consisted of Tweddle, Hibbert, Cairns, Becky Downie, Jennifer Pinches and Hannah Whelan. The athletes were looking quite confident and in-form as they ended up at the fifth position in previous weekend’s qualification
round for the finals, but their performance at the finals was totally contrary to the expectations the spectators had developed.
At a point in the finals, despite of the Romanian team going four points ahead of the British side and US ahead with five points, they had a chance to make it to the bronze medal, but unlike them, the rivals did not fold under the peer pressure and Britain’s
had to jump to the 7th position. Moreover, the falls from Hibbert and Cairns in their first routines killed the remaining hopes. Both of them scored 11.666 and 11.833 points respectively.
They could have comfortably landed to the eighth position had Whelan not added 14.233 promising points to the Britain’s score board. It helped the team putting altogether 37.632 on the board right after the first of the four rotations.
Tweddle, the 25-year-old gymnast from Britain remained reigning world champion on the floor until her rather pathetic performance where she could not qualify for the finals and rendering her efforts for the title useless. She had put 14.666 points on the
board; however, they did not prove to be enough in the cut throat competition and emphatic performances depicted by the rival athletes.
The performance of Cairns and Downie was good in vaults; they scored 14.633 and 14.733 respectively. However, Hobbert could only bag 13.066 which also punished her rest of the teammates. At this point Tweddle rather outperformed in her second event and earned
marvellous 15.733 points, however, that too only contributed in helping her team fall for the seventh position.
While talking to the reporters, Cairns was of the view that amid she was put on the beam first, she had a little pressure to deal with which ultimately hindered her from performing well. Hibbert, while talking after the match said that she was not supposed
to perform at the beam, but since Becky Downie performed poorly, she had to take over, but she could not make it on the bars. When Downie was asked to share her thoughts over the poor performance of the team, she said that even landing at the seventh position
was a huge achievement. Though they made a few mistakes but they were confident for working them out.
For the winners of the event, the tittles were grabbed with minute differences. Russia topped the podium with a total of 175.397 points while the USA was second with 175.196. China claimed the third position with 174.781 points.
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