PREVIEW: Artistic Worlds 2005 - second time Down Under

The 38th annual Championships will be held at the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne Park. The expected field features 308 athletes from 54 countries with 190 competing in the men's and 108 in the women's divisions.
The format contains individual event championships (all-around and apparatus). Qualification rounds help determine advancement to the all-around and apparatus finals.
The top-24 compete in the all-around on Nov. 24-25.
For individual events, the top eight on each apparatus from the qualification rounds advance to the finals (Nov. 26-27).
- The men's floor exercise, pommel hores and rings, the women's vault and uneven bars apparatus final are on Nov. 26 and
- the men's vault, parallel bars and high bar finals are on Nov. 27, both at 2 p.m. (times local to Melbourne).
(Melbourne is 17 hours ahead of USA central standard time and 9 hours ahead CMT (Europe) ).

... about some favorites
Seven Athens Olympics gold medal winners will compete in the championships, including triple gold medal winner Catalina Ponor of Romania. Ponor took the gongs for the floor and beam in Athens, her compatriot Monica Rosu finished on top in the vault, and Emile Lepennec of France won the uneven bars.

Meanwhile, four of the six individual champions from Athens will compete in the men's draw. The Grecian Dimosthenis Tampakos of Greece, who won the rings in Athens, is expected to draw Melbourne's large Greek community to the arena.
South Korean KIM, Dae Eun are among the favorites for the men's all-around title but his compatriot YANG, Tae Young didn't use not all apparatuses at the Saturday's podium training.
They were at the centre of a judging controversy at the Olympic Games 2004 in Athens, where Paul HAMM took gold. Yang appealed against the incorrect assessment of the difficulty of his routine to the Court of Arbitration after taking the bronze and Kim the silver.
The titleholder from the Worlds 2003 in Anaheim HAMM is taking a year off from competition to focus on his university studies.
These championships will also mark the last international competition in which spectators may see a 10-out-of-10 routine!
A new open-ended scoring system will be implemented from January 1, 2006 and will be used for the first time at the American Cup and some times later at the coming events of the running World cup circuit.
The International Gymnastics Federation had introduced the system with the aim of making scoring more transparent and having greater difference between the best and the worst routines, Chetkovich said.