Thursday: The Women s Podium Training

Brazilian Olympic premiere

Brazilian Olympic premiere is in the offing...
According to the regulations of the team qualification on the upcoming Sunday, today the women's podium training took place in Athens' Olympic Hall.
For the first time in history a Brazilian women's team qualified for Olympic Games, after 12 years North Korea is present again for the third time since 1980, and Germany is again represented by two individual gymnasts for the first time since 1996...

The women's podium training - almost a competition
Generally all 12 qualified nations including the Brazilians demonstrated a further upward trend of their teams' profiles today, and not only that: All teams used the podium training as an outmost competition-like round.
However - as with the men - the favourites of the women's competition emerged pretty clear without much ambiguity. Romania, USA and also China will fight hard for the team victory, however, Russia and Ukraine are not without any medal chances, too.
Then, Australia, Brazil at its Olympic debut as well as Spain seem to apply for the team final. Respect to other nations that attracted attention with strong performances of individual gymnasts - like Elisabetz Tweddle on uneven bars for Great Britain or Emilie Lepennec from France on floor.
Due to the regulation of 3-3-performing (the scores of all three gymnasts count for the team result) much will depend on the day form and the stability of the programmes.

.. a self-confident Chinese team in Athens!

In women's gymnastics, too: A WORLD NOVELTY!
In this regard the Chinese suprised not only with excellent performances on uneven bars and balance beam, but the five gymnasts also presented a team closeness on all apparatus - that caused quite a stir today.
Cheng, Fei, for instance, performed as first woman in the world a double layout bwd with double turn on floor!!

Dos Santos facing her Olympic debut

The present Brazilian World Champion on floor Daiane dos Santos baffled once again with her most difficult Arabian somersault version and in the last series with a double layout bwd with full turn. And on vaulting table, too, she celebrated a handspring with layout fwd with two and a half turns!

Most unfortunately, the current World Champion on vaulting table has evident problematic health problems. Oksana Chusovitina fell several times at her vaulting and had to drop out of her programme on uneven bars after a free hip circle... due to acute knee problems it does not seem recommendable to enter the competition of her fourth Olympic Games.

Even though there has been no decision yet, such an exceptional woman as the 29-year-old Oksana Chusovitina does not deserve an unworthy last performance on great stage after 13 years...!

The dedicated Germans Lisa Brüggemann from Cologne and Yvonne Musik from Bergisch-Gladbach experience their long-hoped for Olymic debut as climax of their sport careers... the podium training - together with the Russians - went well and without substantial mistakes and '...both are in excellent mood and you can see that they have much fun in this environment.'

On Friday most of the gymnasts will abandon the opening ceremony, for this event takes 8 to 9 hours for gymnasts including all the queue time and waiting periods. Therefore, it does not seem unconditionally recommendable to take part in this event prior to the men's preliminary competitons on Saturday.

Eckhard Herholz according to information from Athens by D. Hofmann, W. Willam and GYMmedia correspondents

Translation: Florian Schmid-Sorg

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