Ostrava hosts the 2011 FIG Artistic Gymnastics Challenge Cup; Poland going strong in the qualifiers
As the calendar year winds up, so does the 2011 FIG Artistic Gymnastics Challenge Cup series. The Grand Prix, last of six events under the banner, is being held at Ostrava, Czech Republic on December 1-3.
The Winter Stadion Porub in Ostrava is the chosen venue for the tournament, while Gymnova has come forward to provide the apparatus.
The competing gymnasts hail from 27 different countries. The group of participants is composed of 71 male athletes and 43 female athletes.
Formerly the FIG Artistic Gymnastics World cups falling under category B, the Challenge Cup adopted its new label just this year.
This year also declared The Challenge Cup as an open series and all of the events in the series featured Individual Apparatus Finals.
Apart from the Grand Prix Ostrava, this year’s series events incorporated a string of Challenge Cups held in:
Cottbus, Germany (March 11 to March 13) Doha, Qatar (March 30 to April 1) Ghent, Belgium (September 3 to September 4) Maribor, Slovakia (September 23 to September 25) Osijek, Croatia (November 4 to November 6)
The series has its own separate World Rankings list, four for female gymnasts and six for male gymnasts.
The top four gymnasts for each apparatus will qualify to the Individual Apparatus Finals and are eligible to compete in the Grand Prix Ostrava.
A wild card entry each, for male and female gymnasts, is reserved for the Czech Republic’s competing athletes to ensure their participation even if they are unable to make it to the top four qualifiers.
The qualifiers results are already out and Poland looks in good shape with first positions on four events.
The Polish power couple, husband Roman Kulesza and wife Marta Pihan-Kulesza, earned first positions on the high bar and uneven bars, respectively. Roman is a defending titlist of the high bar from 2010.
The second female gymnast to reassure Poland’s strong standing was balance beam topper Katarzyna Jurkowska.
Marek Lyszczarz qualified with the highest scores on the man’s vault, and seems to show no intention of giving up his 2010 vault title.
On floor exercise, defending titlist from last year, Eleftherios Kosmidis did not seem to be enjoying the same comfort as Roman or Marek.
Irish gymnast, Kieran Behan, tied in the first position with Kosmidis, delivering a warning to the Grecian gymnast.
Other top qualifiers for MAG were: Saso Bertoncelj (Slovenia) on pommel horse, Mitja Petkovsek (Slovenia) on parallel bars and Eleftherios Petrounias (Greece) on still rings.
In WAG, Valeria Maksyuta (Israel) topped the vault while Angelina Kysla (Ukraine) scored highest in floor exercise qualifiers.
The apparatus finals will take place on December 3. It should be interesting to see how many of the defending champions are able to retain their titles.
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