American Cup and Jesolo Trophy preview

This week the elite season is in full swing and we get to watch a lot of competitions (what is even sleep?). American Cup will open the All-Around World Cup series in Greensboro, multiple teams will compete in the traditional Jesolo trophy, Eythora Throsdottir and Marta Pihan-Kulesza will grace Austrian Open with their presence while many of the British national team gymnasts will compete at the English Championships. And then we will dive right into the next week with Russian Championships and International Gymnix.

American Cup will take place on March 2 in Greensboro. The full roster can be found here. The competition is often full of falls and mistakes but the roster is quite competitive, with Ellie Black, Mai Murakami and Grace McCallum on the women’s side and Yul Moldauer and Kenzo Shirai on the men’s side. Unfortunately, Marcel Nguyen has just withdrawn. It is not clear whether his withdrawal was due to an injury or some other reason and whether he will be able to compete in the Stuttgart World Cup later in March. The podium training will be streamed on USAG’s Youtube channel on Thursday, February, 28 at 1:30 pm ET (WAG) and 3:30 pm ET (MAG). The broadcast is supposed to be on Olympic Channel and NBC. However, USAG often creates an international feed on their Youtube channel for the fans abroad without access to U.S. cable tv.

Austrian Open will also take place on March, 2 in Linz. All the top Austrian gymnasts are expected to compete as this meet will serve as selection for the European Championships. Teams from Norway, Israel, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Spain will compete as well. Eythora Thorsdottir and Marta Pihan-Kulesza will likely be the stars of the competition. The full roster can be found here. At the moment, there is no information about a live stream, but the organizers streamed the competition in the past, so there is still hope.

Jesolo Trophy, the favorite competition of the American gymnasts, will also happen this week. Marta Karolyi used to bring several teams to this competition and the tradition continued in 2017 but was broken in 2018 when USAG was left without a WAG team coordinator for a while and canceled all competitions but the essential ones. This year, USA is sending only eight gymnasts, four seniors, and four juniors. The senior team is pretty stacked with Emma Malabuyo, Sunisa Lee, Gabby Perea and Shilese Jones. Russia will only send a junior team since the seniors will be competing at the national championships next week. While there is a nominative roster already, it is not clear how accurate it is, since just a few days ago, Irina Komnova said on her Instagram that she will not go to Jesolo. Belgium is sending their Worlds team and China has some big names on the roster, too, including Liu Tingting. The Italian team hasn’t been announced yet, but we’re likely to see the much expected new seniors: D’Amato twins, Giorgia Villa, and Elisa Iorio. Jesolo Trophy will be streamed by Flogymnastics.

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