Ghent World Cup Finals Videos and Results
The Ghent Challenger Cup took place this weekend. Wu Liufang of China was the most successful female gymnast, earning a gold, a silver and a bronze. This should greatly increase her chances at making her first worlds team after being the alternate last year. Her teammate Jiang Yuyuan did manage to beat her on bars, but only by a very small margin. Jiang does not look near her best to me on the other events, unfortunately.
Mariya Livchikova was the pleasant surprise of the competition. I have loved her gymnastics ever since I saw videos of her at the Ukraine Cup in 2010, and I am very happy that she has finally been successful in international competition. She finally hit her original and difficult beam routine, winning the silver medal, and did a beautiful, upgraded floor routine, earning the gold medal. I am now dreaming of two world event finals and the all around, and I hope that she makes at least one of these dreams come true. I will be very very disappointed if the coaches leave her off bars in prelims, even though her routine is very weak.
Viktoria Komova won the gold medal on bars with her typical routine. It looked a little bit sharper than it has recently, which is a good sign. She hit her handstands well and stuck her dismount. She qualified first on beam but failed to medal after falling on her acro series.
The results below are linked to videos of every routine.
The vault podium was made up of two Brazilians, Jade Barbosa and Adrian Gomes, and Israel’s Valeriia Maksiuta. Another Brazilian, 2003 world champion Daiane Dos Santos, won the bronze on floor.
Two other notable things about vault: 1) Alexa Moreno of Mexico competed a layout rudi at this meet. Unfortunately, she struggled on the landing. 2) Maria Paseka, who is in contention for a spot on Russia’s worlds team, definitely did not increase her chances here. While you can count on her landing her DTY, you never know if it will be super clean and score 9.0 or if it will be sloppy and score 8.425 like it did here. She needs either 9.0 E scores every single time OR an Amanar (which I don’t see happening) if she wants to be a vault specialist on a team that already has 4-5 inconsistent/messy DTYs and 2 (highly unlikely) Amanars from the locks. It’s no surprise that she was not on the nominative team.
Finally, Galiulina and Bismpikou rounded out the medals on beam, which is their standout event, tying for bronze.
Full results linked to videos of all of the routines are below.
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Thanks so much! I’ve been looking for this information everywhere!
You’re welcome, Helen! I’m glad you enjoy the blog.