European Championships in Rimini
Belenki after the German gymnasts’ European Championship debacle: “bad luck”
The German gymnasts neither reached the team final nor an apparatus final in Rimini. photo
© Marijan Murat/dpa
Neither national coach Valeri Belenki nor his gymnasts expected this: the team awarded the team final on the pommel horse trembling apparatus. All other European Championship finals will also take place without Germans.
After their debacle on the pommel horse and the early exit from the European Championships, the German gymnasts stood in the corridors of the trade fair feeling broken and at a loss Rimini.
Four exits from the tremor at the end of the qualification cost the weakened team of the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) a place in the team final at the European Championships. In addition, all equipment final battles take place without German participation. “It was bad luck for me,” said national coach Valeri Belenki.
Without the parallel bars world champion Lukas Dauser from Unterhaching, who was ill, the DTB team missed out on a place in the final of the top eight with too many mistakes on the pommel horse. 245,095 points were only enough for ninth place, 0.1 points behind Cyprus.
Andreas Toba (Hannover), Pascal Brendel (Wetzlar), Milan Hosseini (Böckingen), Nils Dunkel (Halle/Saale) and newcomer Carlo Hörr (Schmiden) as well as individual starter Gabriel Eichhorn (Stuttgart) also missed the individual finals. Only Dunkel, who qualified tenth and is the second place on the parallel bars, can have vague hopes.
Marios Georgiou from Cyprus secured the first title of the European Championships, becoming European all-around champion for the first time with 84.265 points. The best German was Brendel in 18th place with 80.699 points, immediately ahead of Dunkel (80.431). Best team in the elimination was Ukraine with 253,661 points.
“It’s bitter, there’s no need to sugarcoat it.”
While the Cypriot Georgiou gave winner interviews with a broad smile, Toba and his colleagues tried to explain the European Championship exit. “Four falls on the horse – there’s nothing more to add,” said the 33-year-old: “One fall less, then we would have been in the team final, two falls less, we would have been further ahead. It’s bitter, you need that can’t be glossed over at all.” The European Championship runner-up on the horizontal bar, who is about to play his fourth Olympic Games, rated the collective blackout on the last apparatus as unique: “I can’t remember a competition in which four gymnasts fell off their horses.”
The German gymnasts had been hit by bad luck in the run-up to the title fights. First, Lucas Kochan (Cottbus), winner of the internal qualification, suffered a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee. Then Dauser also had to miss the game at short notice due to a viral illness.