University of Minnesota Athletics
Burns Blog No. 3 for World Gymnastics Championships
9/5/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
Germany Moves into Third, Displacing USA to 4th Place
The hometown favorites, Germany, had a great meet in the final sub-division moving slightly ahead of Team USA by a score of 364.35 to 364.00. Making it into the team finals after talking 13th last year is a great statement to the world that USA Gymnastics is a force to be reckoned with. The top 8 teams make it into team finals and they are as follows:
1. China - 374.275
2. Japan - 370.725
3. Germany - 364.35
4. USA - 364.00
5. Russia - 362.175
6. Romania - 361.625
7. Spain - 360.725
8. Korea - 360.40
It was an exciting day of amazing gymnastics and the US ended up with three individual event finalists. Minnesota’s own Guillermo Alvarez is a finalist on the floor exercise. He was the silver medalist on floor at the Pan Am Games in July and is in great company with the other 7 best gymnasts in the world on this event.
Sasha Artemev, 2006 World Bronze Medalist, also made it to the finals on pommel horse again and will have a chance to bring home more hardware on his specialty.
Kevin Tan also made the event finals on still rings and will do battle with 7 of the absolute strongest men on the planet!
Jonathan Horton is currently in 9th place in the all-around and will compete in the all around finals against 23 other all-around competitors.
This is a great moment for USA Gymnastics and the men’s program. After the 2004 Olympic Games where the US won a team silver medal, the entire Olympic team either retired or took a sabbatical from competition. This is a brand new team of now-seasoned veterans who have come back from the depths of a 13th place finish last year to be in medal contention again. No other team in the world is at these world Championships with not a single person from their 2004 Olympic team. My hat goes off to this group of young gymnasts who decided never to give up when many said they weren’t good enough to hang with the big boys. Thanks to their performance today, USA is one of the big boys again!!
