24. May 2012  
Montpellier, France  
Artistic Gymnastics

* Mens Qualification: No Team surprises, but Italy missed the Final

The 34th Men's European Championships 2012 began today (- 10 clock, local time) with the qualifying round for the team final (Saturday) and for the apparatus finals (onSunday).  An all-around final is not advertised at these Europeans.
In three groups perform a total of 150 athletes from 36 European nations.

In the very first group the Brits set the first important "scent mark" of this event.
Also Russia was a strong team and after the third group France ousted defending champion Germany into fourth place, followed by Romania, Belarus, Ukraine and Sitzerland ...

SUBDIVISION 1
POR - LTU - ROU - Mix2 - NED - BLR -
IRL - GEO - GRE - GBR - Mix4
________________________________

* As expected, seated themselves in group 1, the silver medalist at the 2010 European Championships team (Birmingham), Great Britain, at the head of the interim evaluation.  With 265.718 points, they put the same impressive 8.4 points difference from the second-placed Romanians, who were expected to just jump on the device to compete with the best rating.
Floor, horse, rings and high bar went clear to the British.
At the parallel bar reached Belarus (41.500), the highest result and devices are currently in third place.

* In the individual competition marked the British ECh-third of Berlin (2011), Daniel Purvis with 86.764 the previous top-score before the Dutchman Bart Deurloo (83.548)
  >> Provisional Results, Teams    > Provisional, Indiv. Results

SUBDIVISION  2 ( - from  2 pm on)
HUN - NOR - POL - SLO - GER - RUS -
CRO - CZE - ESP - TUR - AUT - BEL -_______________________________

Titleholder Germany had not a good day:  Like Zonderland in the morning, it was also Philipp Boy (GER), who had to leave the stretch involuntarily on high bar to Adler 1/1-Drehung ... 
On floor  Matthias Fahrig fabricated the landing on his pants after the first acrobatic line ... , but he reached the final of vault.
Final chance should also Marcel Nguyen on parallel bars (3) and perhaps the rings (5); may be also Sebastian Krimmer (4 bars) is under the best eight ... but the last passage contains some of the professionals! ......!

SUBDIVISION 3
ITA - DEN - Mix1 - UKR - ISR - SUI -
FIN - Mix3 - FRA - Mix5 BUL - ARM -
____________________________

The French competing in front of their home crowd seem in great shape. In rotation 1 and 2 the crowd is cheering for the nice performances of Samir Ait Said who with a 15.566 gets the best score on rings and who vaults into the second provisional position.
Hamilton Sabot also manages the second rank of the qualifications at the parallel pars with a nice 15.233 and a tie with the Greek Tsoliakidis. However, with the fall of Yann Cucherat at this apparatus we yet have to see if they will be part of the top qualifier trio.
In fact, with a final total of 263.687, France takes the third qualifying rank.


* Team Qualification - Final standing
1. GBR – 265,718; 2. RUS – 264,474; 3. FRA – 263,687; 4. GER – 260,801
5. ROU – 257,327; 6. BLR – 256,936; 7. UKR – 256,186; 8. SUI – 254,513
... the further ranking:
9. ITA – 252,661: 10. ESP – 252,186 11. ARM – 249,578; 12. POR – 246,112
13. AUT – 243,644; 14. BEL – 243,259; 15. GRE – 242,902
16. IRL – 241,985; 17. HUN – 241,195; 18. POL – 239,260
19. BUL – 237,978; 20. NED – 237,445; 21. FIN – 237,028
22. DEN – 235,427; 23. NOR – 234,176; 24. TUR – 226,835
25. LTU – 220,328; 26. GEO – 218,818; 27. CRO – 166,930
28. SLO – 158,577
       >> Detailed Results