PREVIEW: 37. World Championships

podium training women

The artistic gymnastics highlight of the year gets near: Today at 8.00 a.m. local tim starts the podium training of women for a distance of more than 14 hours.
The team of Canada will be the very first starting together with Belarus and France..., followed by Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany and host USA. Yesterday the men's teams finished their podium training...

Anaheim 2003 : World Championships Arena, Podium Training...
(C) Photos: Tom Theobald www.tomtheobald.com

100 years WC in Artistic Gymnatics

100 YEARS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Birthday of the World Championships is the year 1903 From 14th to 18th August 1903 the Frensh men Cazalet initiated the first “International Tournament” of men’s gymnastics in Antwerp and 4 countries participated in the tournament: Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. From the 10th tournament in 1934 in Budapest on, where for the first time also women took part, the tournament was called “World Championship” and every former tournament was put on this level afterwards. So the upcoming Championships from 16th to 24th August 2003 are the 37th champs for men and the 28th champs for women.

ANAHEIM 2003: QUALIFICATION FOR OLYMPIA
High demands in terms of the Olympic qualification are not to advantage for the smaller nations, which don’t have such a strong team as the bigger ones:
- the 12 best nations (every nation with 6 men and 6 women) qualify directly for Athens 2004
- nations ranked 13th to 19th are allowed to send 2 gymnasts to Athens
- from the 19th rank on every nation has 1 ticket (max. of 10) and
- the FIG is able to give 3+1 single tickets to special gymnasts

Finally in Athens will be all together 98 women and 98 men. Such an Olympic ticket can only be won in the all-around competition. A really difficult task for specialists like the Slovenians Petkovsek (parallel bars) and Pegan (parallel bars and high bar), the Austrian Zimmermann (pommel horse, vault), the specialist on the still rings van Gelder (NED) or the artist on the horse Alexandersson (ISL).

Romania - titleholder 2001

WHO ARE THE FAVOURITES?
Among the women the US-girls will probably fight hard against the top-nations of Romania and Russia. Under the current final conditions everything seems to be possible among the 8 best nations (3 gymnasts). For the further much sought after 4 Olympic tickets apply nearly twice as much nations, which are mostly in common conditions: Belarus, Italy, Canada, Hungary, Bulgaria … even Germany.

Khorkina - 3rd all-around title?

For awarding the gymnastic queen in the all-arounds it would be nice if actually a “woman” dominates over the biomechanical advantages of the youngsters.
Svetlana Khorkina, titleholder, gives her sport a great aesthetical chance to do so.

The 24-year old diva from Russia, who takes part at World Championships for the 8th time, could win her third all-around title (after 1997 and 2001) … if one of her many strong challengers doesn’t take the chance.

Ivan Ivankov (BLR) 2001,
in the team of the titleholder

Among the men it doesn’t look much different. There is also a relatively clear formation of the favourites. No-one doubts about the Chinese team to fight the gold medal, especially against Romania and the USA. How strong will titleholder Belarus be and how can Russia, Ukraine, France, Japan and Korea perform?
Many candidates for the few Olympic tickets! The performance of the day, stability and content of the exercises will decide who is among the 12 best teams: even Italy, Latvia, Spain, Canada, Cuba, Greece and Germany… they all can make it. Too many nations for only 12 tickets…

Yang, Wei (CHN), silver in Sydney

To give a forecast for the men’s all-around is similar to a lottery, above all because Jordan Jowtschew (BUL), Marian Dragulescu (ROM) and Ioan Sibiu (ROM) will apply for the title as well as the ambitious local Blaine Wilson and the in Gent 2001 unlucky Paul Hamm. What abilities has the sad Vice-World Champion Ivan Ivankov, who was beaten in Gent by the 15-year old Feng Jing?
Not to forget the Chinese with Li, Xiaopeng, Yang, Wei (2nd in Sydney) and junior Liang, Fuliang in their team.
At the moment hard to value are the experiences Russians with Olympic winner Alexei Nemov, former World Champion Nikolai Krukov or Alexei Bondarenko. Vice-World Champion of 2001, Ivan Ivankov, will not perform a whole all-around competition because of an injury.