11. August 2004  
Olympic City Athens  
Artistic Gymnastics

Wednesday: The Men s Podium Training

The men's podium training

Along the lines of the schedule of the men's first preliminary competitions, which form the beginning of the Olympic gymnastics competitions on Saturday, the offical podium training took place divided in three groups on Wednesday.
At 12.30 h France, Romania, Italy and Canada started, at 16.30 h Russia, Spain and USA followed and in the evening group at 20.30 h Korea, Germany, Japan and World Champion China performed for the first time on the Olympic podium in the competition hall ....

China - Olympic dream team 2000

The favorites beginn to emerge...
Even though no absolute aspirant for gold could be spotted after a complete observation of all 12 teams of the upcoming Olympic tournament - the teams with real medal ambitions already became apparent.
Evidently there is the present World and Olympic Champion China as well as Japan - in excellent, cohesive constitution, USA, Romania and Ukraine. Despite being the secret favourites for the victory for many observers here in Athens, the Chinese completely convinced only on pommel horse and vaulting table. However, they did not show all their aces during the podium training...

Japan - WCh bronze 2003

The team final aspirants...
Perhaps, the teams from Russia, Korea and France could be classified as a second group on account of their performances. These teams have real chances to qualify for the final of the best eight... however, there might be no sharp dividing line to Germany, Canada, Italy and Spain which could be ranked into a third team profile, so far...

There were different opinions of how to make best use of a podium training at Olympics:
For the top teams is was like a real competition, others - like the Germans did especially on vaulting table and parallel bars - re-checked the lapse of time including warming up on the apparatus, competition and apparatus optimisation. Other nations only tested the apparatus and did not perform complete routines...

Andergassen, Hirsch in the Olympic Hall

The German squad left a 'thoughtful' impression
Résumé of the German head coach Andreas Hirsch on the late Wednseday evening:
'Indeed, even outsiders attest our squad a rather toughtful impression. I am pretty satisfied with everything we did so far. If we will be able to repeat this in competiton in a similar way, it will come up to my expectations - with some less insecurities on floor, perhaps, and plus some improvements of the landings...
I stick to it: Our aim is still to reach the eighth place, to reach the Olympic team final. Our boys and I didn't abondon this goal. However, everything will depend on the actual day form!

Performing for Ronny...!

The German boys perform to full extent for Ronny Ziesmer!
Via this way: We send our warmest greetings to Ronny Ziesmer in his sickbed in Berlin: The whole team understands its performance in every sense as his mission and will perform for him to full extent!'

On Thursday morning the German team will train in the warming up hall which is situated directly at the Olympic village and is equipped by the supplier with original Olympic apparatus (without podium). They will not perform complete routines but focus on the last polishing and optimisation of dismounts and landings.
... some observations:
>> On floor the North Korean Ri, Jong Song was once again the outstanding gymnast with his triple tsukahara (!!) - an absolute novelty in the world of gymnastics, and, furthermore, at the end (!) of his routine he performed an excellent double layout bwd with double turn!! Hopefully, he will not forget the required element on the floor in competition as he did today; for then there will be a dedcution of two tenths.

>> On pommel horse the Romanians demonstrated already in the first group the most cohesive team performance, followed by the brilliant routines of China and Japan with almost no stability mistakes ...
>> On rings just both favourites were alotted into one group. The other day they had tried to keep out of each other's way: Jordan Jowtschew and the Greek Dimosthenes Tambakos. However, naturally there is a wider field of excellent adepts. Especially Jason Gatson (USA), and Roman Zozulia (UKR) as well as the young Russian 'newbies' at Olympics impressed with their performances.

... Dragulescu (ROM) (Archive photo)

>> On the 'PEGASES' vaulting table, which will have its Olympic premiere here in Athens, especially the Romanians (Dragulescu) and the Koreans attracted attention with their most difficult vaulting. However, the Chinese, too, did excellently by showing a handspring + layout fwd with two and a half turns!

Even the German gymnasts surprised with absolutely appealing performances (Matthias Fahrig).
>> The parrallel bars seem still to be tightly in Asian hands. In terms of difficulty, elegance and highest stability the Japanese were simply head and shoulders above the rest...!
>> On high bar the Greek audience certainly looks forward to the small graceful former World Champion Vlasios Maras, who might have even better chances than to qualify for the final only.
And once again the Japanese were the most impressive gymnasts: All of them performed three Kovacs somersaults in their routines - tucked, stretched, with full turn, ... and all of them finished their routines with a double somersault with double turn as standard...
The upcomming Olympic competitions promise artistic gymnastics on the highest level!

Eckhard Herholz,
according to reports by Dieter Hofmann, Wolfgang Willam, Andreas Hirsch and local correspondents in Athens

Translation: Florian Schmid-Sorg