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After yesterday’s nail biting finish, the gymnasts and audience knew we were in for another great competition where the 3 highest gymnasts from each country qualified for the Apparatus finals! The Chinese Team were determined to take home gold medals and what a competition we had in store! World Champion on Beam Fan Ye, World and European Championships medallist Beth Tweddle and Olympic Finalist Li Ya, were just 3 of the gymnasts battling for Gold!
Beth Tweddle, top scorer in the All Around and Imogen Cairns, 3rd in the AA were the only 2 gymnasts who qualified for all 4 finals, with Samantha Bailey, Guo Li and Li Ya in 3 finals. China were superb in the Apparatus Finals where they won 8 out of the 12 medals winning all 3 medals on Beam, with Fan Ye winning Gold on Beam and joint first on Floor with her stunning routine.
GB were not to be denied and the crowd roared them on as Rhian, Imogen and Beth went to A Bars, and performed brilliantly. China also had superb performances and all three medal winners performed from 10 start values highlighting the fantastic quality of the gymnasts. Rhian performed her innovative bars routine which saw her deservedly become European Junior Champion last year, but Li Ya stepped up to score 9.65 with Fan Ye with a 9.575 with superb routines combining high difficulty with great interpretation of the Code of Points. Beth was the last gymnast to perform and the crowd held their breath! A classic performance saw Beth take Gold as the audience cheered the newly crowned official number one in the World F.I.G. Rankings with a competition high of 9.675!
Beam was a classic demonstration of superb technique from the Chinese as they performed terrific leaps and jumps with uninterrupted flow to deservedly take all 3 medals, with 13 year old Xiao Sha taking bronze on her favourite apparatus. The gold medallist in the 2003 Junior Asian Championships is certainly one to watch out for as we head towards Beijing!
The Floor finals provided a fantastic finale, with Fan Ye’s beautiful dance and interpretation of her Spanish Guitar music performing a great routine. Imogen and Sam performed with their normal poise, style and powerful tumbling from Sam, and Beth produced one of her best floor performances with 1 and a half twist step out into Arabian double tucked sommersault. She also performed a superb double piked Arabian, to score 9.675 and share the Gold medal with Fan Ye and China’s Lin Xia taking bronze.
A fantastic competition and brilliant individual and team performances saw both teams swamped by autograph hunters at the end, and great to see both teams spending alot of time afterwards signing autographs and posing for photos with the fans. Congratulations to both Teams and to BG and the Chinese Federation on a superb competition.
CLICK HERE FOR REPORT AND SCORES FROM THE TEAM COMPETITION - GB WINS GOLD BY 0.075!
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