December 11, 2020 – As many as six Croatian gymnasts will compete for medals in Mersin, Turkey, on Sunday as part of the European Championships – juniors Liam Rebić and Mate Žugec on the pommel horse, and seniors Aurel Benović on the floor, Filip Ude and Robert Seligman on the pommel horse, and Tin Srbić on the horizontal bar.
Of the entire Croatian delegation, Jakov Vlahek did not make the finals, as he came 14th on the pommel horse. Tin Srbić, the defender of the European silver medal, received the best score of 14,333 in the qualifying round. Aurel Benović deserved his first European final by coming in sixth in the qualifications.
“I went through the qualifiers at this year’s strange European Championships. Honestly, I planned to go into the exercise with a start of 6.2; in the end, it turned out to be 5.8 because I started off poorly, pulled out the jumps, and decided to throw out the “Možnik” element in the middle of the exercise. It would be a little too much for me at that point. I felt like it was training. There are certainly no such calculations in the finals, and I am going with my best exercise, and we are going to attack the medals,” said Srbić.
As expected, there were many big names in Turkish gymnastics (Ibrahim Colak, Ahmet Onder) in the finals, and it is a great pity that we cannot see top Russian and French gymnasts in Mersin who canceled their arrival.
Due to the pandemic, Mersin, Turkey replaced Baku, Azerbaijan, where the European Gymnastics Championships were to be held this spring. So far, the strangest EP in the history of gymnastics is being held with strong epidemiological measures and daily COVID-19 testing. The entire national team of Azerbaijan and the juniors from Serbia have already returned home due to infection.
Hard times, but we must wait for Sunday.
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