The Israeli Gymnastics Championships took place Saturday, June 23rd in Tel Aviv and brought the audience some big surprises.
Gymnastics is not as popular in Israel as Soccer, Basketball or even Tennis, not even close, so even the biggest gymnastics meet of the year, Nationals, are free of charge. Just come and watch, please?
18 women competed. The Seniors included only 6 girls this year.
Over 20 years have passed since Israel sent an Artistic woman gymnast to the Olympics. And this time it’s Valeria Maksyuta‘s turn to bring some light and acknowledgement of Israeli gymnastics to the world.
Maksyuta is known for her Vault. In May she even did the unbelievable and successfully passed tough Israeli criteria to qualify to London: Maksiyuta needed a 1-12 place in the all-around or finishing top 6 at Europeans.
What wasn’t expected on Saturday, was to see Maksyuta standing on the podium and taking “only” the bronze medal. 3 falls from the Balance Beam just couldn’t be fixed by another apparatus, and the girls from Hapoel Tel Aviv, the decorated club that brought Israel more than 20 national champions over the years, took advantage of Valeria’s “bad day”, claiming the first 2 places.
Israel’s new all-around champion is Nofar Cohen, a 17-year-old with limited international experience. Second was Hadas Koren, Nofar’s teammate, also 17 with about the same international exposure.
Maksyuta still dominated Vault, as expected.
After the competition, Israeli sports websites started analyzing what happened to Israel’s long awaited Olympian.
They question how “important” this meet was for Valeria. In less than a month she will stand at the London O2 arena and try to hit her best competition ever. Let’s just hope that Nationals were a step towards it.
This misfire should help her refocus to peak for Olympics.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 