Celine Van Gerner was slated to compete at the European Games. This would be her first international competition since the Achilles surgery which led her to miss Worlds last year. However, she told to The Force is Grace that her recovery is going slower than expected and Van Gerner has decided to miss the Games:
“My ankle is doing quite well, but physically I haven’t recovered enough. I made the promise to myself that my health comes first and therefore I don’t want to rush anything.”
Van Gerner will be replaced by Laura de Witt, a first-year senior. She will join Naomi Visser. The Netherlands opted not to accept a nominative spot to the European Games from Euros and only used the two non-nominative spots the team qualified last year. For de Witt, this will be her first major senior competition. Recently, she competed at the FIT Challenge where she scored 50.032 in the all-around. Both de Witt and Visser will also compete at the Dutch Nationals a week before the European Games.
Translation from Dutch by Kim.
