Preview – Women’s All-Around FinalLONDON (GBR), FIG Office, October 16, 2009: After the excitement of the Men’s All-Around competition last night, today we see the top 24 female gymnasts from Wednesday’s qualification event, battle it out for the prize of 2009 World All-Around Champion.
The two British hopes, Rebecca Downie and Rebecca Wing will be hoping for a lot of support from the crowd in sold out The O2 Arena, who twenty four hours earlier, cheered their teammate Daniel Keatings towards his Silver medal. Wing will hope for a repeat of her solid qualification performance, whilst British Champion Beckie Downie, who had several errors in qualifying will be keen to show her best work tonight and impact upon the top ten.
Top qualifier for today’s event was Rebecca Bross (USA) who at only 16-years of age is coached by Valeri Liukin. Valeri knows how to produce All-Around Champions, having coached his daughter Nastia Liukin to the 2008 Olympic title in Beijing.
Likely to be in contention for a medal with Bross is fellow 16-year-old Ana Porgras from Romania, who impressed everyone with her sparkling, if somewhat surprising performance to qualify second. The other gymnasts who we can expect to contest the Gold tonight include several who competed in Beijing last summer and are looking more experienced here in London; Bridget Sloan (USA), Ksenia Semenova (RUS) plus two of the Chinese team who captured the imagination on home soil last year – Yang Yilin and Deng Linlin. Yang Yilin, was the Bronze medallist in the All–Around competition in Beijing and along with Semenova, who was fourth come here highly ranked but neither had a comfortable qualification on Wednesday and will be looking to improve.
Watch out for a much improved Lauren Mitchell (AUS) and Koko Tsurumi (JPN) who might spring a surprise!
(source: British Gymnastics, adapt. FIG)The
FIG live commentary will be available tonight from the start of the competition at 6:30 pm local time.
