Belgium qualified in the third place to the team final at Euros, a very impressive feat considering that they brought only four gymnasts to Glasgow and Senna Deriks couldn’t do leg events because of a nagging injury. However, since Belgium does not have any depth at the moment and Nina Derwael’s ankles have been bothering her recently, Belgium decided to withdraw from the team finals and to focus on the individual finals (where they have better medal chances) and on the preparation for Worlds. This cause quite a controversy among the gymternet and also made a lot of Italian fans happy since Italy now advanced to the team final.
We spoke to Belgium right after the finished their competition in the qualification and before they knew they wouldn’t be competing at the team final.
Q: You all have very unique and memorable floor routines. How do you come up with them?
Senna Deriks: Our choreographer knows us and our personalities very well and she chooses the music and the choreography to fit that.
Deriks also talked about the routines of her teammates, Axelle Klinckaert and Maelysse Brassart. Klinckaert’s Harry Potter themed routine is very unique and awesomely weird and Deriks said that the gymnast is trying to portray several characters in it:
She’s a little bit of everything at once, she’s a wizard, she’s a monster, she tries to bring the music to life.
On Brassart’s crow floor routine, Deriks said: It matches her soul very well.
Q: What are your goals for this season?
Senna Deriks: We hope to make the team final and a couple of individual finals for Nina and Axle and after that, the next goal is World Championships where we hope to deliver a good competition, preparing for the next year and the Olympic Games.
Q: How is Rune Hermans doing? Did an injury prevent her from competing here?
A: She’s not injured but she had a rough year because she started university this year and she just had her exams, so she needed to adapt to a whole new lifestyle. She was just not ready, she was very tired and she wanted to do her best both in school and in gymnastics at the same time. The European Championships are not really the goal of the year, the Worlds are so soon after the competition, so the coaches chose to let her rest now in order to prepare for the World Championships.
Nina Dewael then talked about her floor routine and the possible upgrades.
Q: Who chose the music for your floor? I was wondering since it’s a song from a Russian musical and not many people outside of Russia know it.
Nina Derwael: Our choreographer, Irina Shadrina. She told me the song is about two lovers, the man came to the Caribbean from Russia and he met this girl and they fell in love but then he needed to go back to Russia and during his journey the boat sunk. And the girl never stopped waiting for him. The choreographer wants me to portray the girl in this routine who’s waiting for her loved one to come back and at the end of my routine, she gets the news that he didn’t make it and she wants to touch him one last time.
Q: How did you decide to add your recent upgrade on bars, the Nabieva?
Nina Derwael: I really love the element – to watch and, obviously, to do it. And I chose to add these few tenths to my D score because it’s important in order to win medals. We tried it with my coach and it actually worked out pretty quick, I learned it pretty well so we decided to already do it here.
Q: And do you plan to add any more upgrades to your routine? Because right now you already have the highest difficulty.
Nina Derwael: Yeah, we’re still trying some things out but I think it’ll take a little bit longer to put them into my routine and we’ll see. I hope we’re going to stick with this routine for Worlds as well. I don’t know for sure but that’s the plan and, perhaps, after Worlds, we’ll work on new things.
Q: Are you planning any upgrades on other events?
Nina Derwael: We are all working very hard on vault to upgrade, the whole team is actually working hard to upgrade to 1.5 Yurchenko or to a DTY. I’m doing an FTY right now and I want to get a 1.5 Yurchenko or a double and then I also would like do to some more difficult tumbling on floor but the pain in my ankles kept me a little bit from working on it. Now that everything’s better I hope to really get in the gym and upgrade those two events.
Q: What do you do besides gymnastics? Studies?
Nina Derwael: I just graduated high school, so now I’m going to go to the university and I will study office management. But I’m not going to take all the classes, I’m just going to take a few because I’m busy with the training and we’ll see how long it takes.
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