Friedly Meets in Spain - Preparations for the Worlds...

Rafael MARTINEZ- best of all-around

Saturday, September 30, the Spanish national teams of artistic gymnastics welcome national squads in preparation for the coming World Championships:

Spanish women lining up against Romanian national team in the Pavilion Multipurpose of Caceres (Western Spain).

Spanish men win their triple meet in the facilities of C.S.D in Madrid. in front of Belarus and Portugal.
Best of all-around was Rafael MARTINEZ in a good constitution again after injury, followed by Dmitri SAVITZKY (BLR) and Sergio MUNOZ (ESP)....

Sergio MUNOZ came on third place at the all-around today ...

Rafael MARTINEZ, winner all-around

Friendly Meet: Spain - Belarus - Portugal
Madrid, 2006, September 30 -

- from Madrid reports Ester TEIJEIRA, Spain -
Today we enjoyed a remarkable triangular competition between three European teams, Spain, Belarus and Portugal, which are fully involved in the preparation of the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus (Denmark), where the qualification for the Olympic Games in Beijing will be decided.
Spanish Men's team started with Rafael Martinez, Gervasio Deferr, Victor Cano, Isaac Botella, Iván San Miguel, Jose Luis Fernandez, Javier Gomez, Sergio Mu?oz.
Hosts started in vault and Belarus in high bar, with Portugal resting and preparing to start. The first two rotations showed that Spain was starting to create a big gap with the other participants, while Portugal was placing before Belarus, which had a very dissapointing performance at the pommel horse and the floor.

Ivan Ivankov for Belarus on three apparatus

However, with the next rotations, Belarus started to show its strength, above all with the rings, where they took the best score beating Spain, with Ivan Ivankov reaching an extraordinary 16.200 score. This way they got to end in the second position in the final team's ranking and showed they probably have much more to show than they did today.
But, though the hard efforts of the Byelorussian team to recover the disadvantage, Spain managed to mantain it, and even make it bigger.
Rafael Martínez had a very consistent (and promising for Aarhus) performance, with his natural regularity with all his exercises above 15 points unless the floor one, where he got 'only' 14.800. With that scores, he got the first position in AA with 90.950 points.

Gervasio Deferr, 15.800 on vault...

The Spanish team was favoured by the rising of the young promise Sergio Mu?oz, who finished third in the all-around with 88,450 points, showing he's the future star of the team, as well as that there exists a new pushing generation in Spain for the next years to come, together with Jose Luis Fernández (4th in AA) and Javier Gómez (who, in spite of starting out of competition, would have got the 5th place in AA).

Sergio Mu?oz managed even to beat the double Olympic champion in vault, Gervasio Deferr, in 'his' apparatus, where Mu?oz got an impressive 16,200 while the judges gave a 15,800 for Gervasio Deferr.

Portugal placed third and last today, but they showed several interesting exercises, and even some remarkable ones, like the 15,750 for Felipe Bezugo (who represented Portugal in Athens 2004) in vault or the 15,650 for Luis Araujo in the same apparatus (the very best rotation for Portugal today) together with a good performance of the team in the pommel horse, where we could see a 14,800 for and .
The best Portuguese gymnast in the all-around was Pedro Almeida, the most regular one of the team, who placed 6th with a total score of 85,700 points
The team is improving a lot, and one can notice the hard work they are doing to get nearer to the best teams in Europe.

The event took place in the premises of the Consejo Nacional de Deportes of Spain, in Madrid, with a cheering audience composed mainly by young gymnasts and relatives, in a friendly atmosphere and with a brilliant organization by the Spanish Federation.
- Esther Teijeira reporting for GYMmedia

>> Detailed Results: Teams -- // -- >> Detailed Results: All-around

In Caceres / Spain was held a friendly meet of
>> Spanish women team vs. Rumania

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