China Tops women's Preliminaries at 2003 Gymnastics Worlds

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 19, 2003

China Tops women's Preliminaries at 2003 Gymnastics Worlds

The Chinese teenage gymnasts displayed their top forms to outscore defending championsRomania, topping the women's team qualifying at the 37th world gymnastics championships here Monday evening.

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The Chinese teenage gymnasts displayed their top forms to outscore defending championsRomania, topping the women's team qualifying at the 37th world gymnastics championships here Monday evening.

The Chinese, with all new-comers except two in the squad, scored 148.671 points to surpass all others for the women's team finals slated for Wednesday, by finishing first on balance beam and second on uneven bars.

Four of the five competing Chinese gymnasts scored more than 9.400 each on the beam, including the day-high 9.712 from 17-year-old Fan Ye who only made the national team last year.

On another odds-on event of the uneven bars, both Zhang Nan andKang Xin, the ace gymnasts in China, failed to catch the higher bar from their fly-over to score 8.100 and 8.800 respectively. However, the team's total from the event still ranked second amongall competing teams.

"The Chinese girls had their best performances tonight," said Gao Jian, head of the Chinese delegation, who hugged every gymnastand coach on the courtside, "Both Fan Ye and Lin Li (9.637) top the qualifiers for the beam and uneven bars respectively."

"The girls did very well psychologically, however the winning team has to be strong in both mind and the style, and they have toshow consistency," said Lu Shanzhen, coach of the Chinese women team.

"We're leading for now, but we start from a clean slate for thefinals," Lu said, "Our young gymnasts feel less pressure and they just go do it. The mistakes (made by both Kang Xin and Zhang Nan)aren't due to lack of experience, they're just mistakes."

Romania, led by national champion Aura Andreea Munteanu, finished second with 148.120 points, beating the hosts by nearly half a point, although none of them joined the top six in the all-around individuals' rankings.

"I have three girls on the team who have never competed on a podium. Today was only a rehearsal, the real competition will be the day after tomorrow. The girls don't have enough experience, they need another year to do well in Athens," said Romanian head coach Octavian Belu.

However, as the finals will be conducted on a 6-3-3 format, coach Belu said that "it's (placing in the preliminaries) not so important with the new rule. I think after four years of the samerules and the same code, it's too much to expect on each apparatus."

The United States, who made two latest replacements due to injuries and sickness, collected 147.697 points for the third spot,with Ukraine and world runners-up Russia placing fourth (146.119) and fifth (145.572).

Chellsie Memmel, 15, a last-minute replacement for balance beamworld champion Ashley Postell who is suffering from a stomach flu,became the biggest U.S. star, scoring a team-high 37.449 after herall-around title freshly won from the 2003 Pan American Games.

Carly Patterson, also 15, finished second, ahead of national all-around champion Courtney Kupets as the United States is vying for its first-ever women's team gold in the 100-year history of the world championships.

"Winning Pan American Games was a huge confidence boost. I'm not tired from any of the traveling," said Memmel, "Workouts had been going really great so I just had to keep my routines normal. I wasn't thinking about the all-around at all. I was focused on the team."

Ukraine, the sixth-place finishers in the last worlds, who cameout in the last subdivision, was led by Irina Yarotska, bronze medallist on the balance beam at last year's worlds.

Led by legendary Svetlana Khorkina, the Russians remained to bethe forever bets for the title due to the longevith of Khorkina and the versatility of European junior all-around champion Anna Pavlova.

Khorkina and Pavlova contributed 37.249 and 36.812 respectivelyfor the team, and ranked third and fifth in the individual all-around standings.

Russia lost 2001 world all-around silver medalist Natalia Ziganshina to injury, which forces Olympic and world vault champion Elena Zamolodchikova, who has been slowed this year with an ankle injury, into the line-up.

"We need to be more united. We're fighting for medals. Gold would be nice. We will be okay in the finals," said Russian head coach Leonid Arkayev.

After its fourth place finish in 2001 worlds, Spain chased the Russians closely, and Elena Gomez, gold medallist on floor exercise at last year's worlds, proved strong enough on all events,scoring a total of 37.549 points for the top spot in the individual all-around standings.

Spain's head coach Jesus Carballo said that "if I remain in good health, (Beijing 2008) will be my last Olympics. We were trying to get the very young girls prepared for the future. The goal was to (qualify) to Athens."

Australia and Brazil alslo made the finals from the preliminaries which also produce top eight individuals for each apparatus, 24 gymnasts for the all-around, and 12 top teams for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

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