| "I am still young. I
will surely come back to Aeon Cup as a champion."...Alina Kabaeva
(Gazprom, Russia) said at an interview after last year's Aeon Cup.
At the Sydney Olympics, she was expected to win the gold medal with no trouble,
but a fall on hoop took her down to the bronze medal position. At
the following competition, the Aeon Cup, she was still in a nightmare, missing
on an event. Her face displayed deep sadness, but she was proud of herself
at the interview . For that reason, she must have been very focused at this
meet. The new Code of Points would push her up, since she had a lot of difficulty,
but the competition this year was a surprise.
Her teammate, Irina Tchaschina is in great shape this year and the Aeon Cup was
not exceptional. By contrast, Kabaeva missed on some events. She looked
absolutely out of shape, and could not hit her balance or pivot. She had
many execution errors. Tchaschina displayed some machinelike amazing and
stable throws, and Kabayeva operated in her shadow.
However, at the semi-finals and the finals, Kabaeva revived. She showed
how she could compete as a champion. She concentrated in the tense
atmosphere, and the crowd encouraged her. Finally, she won the all-around
competition. When she finished her final event, rope, she showed her emotion on
the floor. Everybody knew how she had suffered for three days and how happy
she felt at her win.
I don't think the difference between Kabaeva and Tchaschina was as
much as the difference in points. Both of them were physically talented.
Tchaschina's execution was supposed to be better than Kabaeva's. One point
for the standing was "originality".
In the new Code of Points, if the athletes invent a brand
new movement, they have to declare it to the FIG. If their new movement
is admitted, the FIG will give bonus points for value parts and originality points
Chaschina had a lot of originality points but Kabaeva had more: Perhaps
the difference was 0.6 or 0.7 higherin favor of Kabaeva. If both women performed
perfectly, Kabaeva's composition points would bring her a win.
Anyway, the competition was very exciting thanks to Kabaeva and Tchaschina.
Tamara Yerofeyeva and Anna Bezsonova of the second place team, Deriugina School
of Ukraine, showed beautiful gymnastics, and contributed a lot to the competition.
The Japanese team could not go to the semi-finals but not much difference was
seen between the top countries except for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. They
just go forward step by step, and don't think about the difficulty of the new
code.
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