Last weekend Kiev hosted the Ukraine International Cup (former known as Stella Zakharova Cup).
Dzianis Sanuvonh from Belarus took gold in the men’s all-around competition with 77.700, Volodymyr Hrybuk from Ukraine became second (77.500) and Sercan Demir from Turkey took the third place (76.700).
Sanuvonh said that he did not expect to win gold: “It wasn’t my best performance, I didn’t expect a victory, I thought I’d be third or fourth”.
Diana Varinska from Ukraine took gold in the women’s all-around competition with 52.100. She also presented an upgraded bars routine with 6.2 D.
Diana's upgraded bars set from EF. (6.2 D). pic.twitter.com/BtRMGsWlQM
— TJ Almeida (@ItsTJ_A) April 2, 2018
Varinska said that she really wanted to experience competing in front of the home crowd: “For a long time I wanted to compete at home because you always feel more support [here] than abroad. I’ve always heard how people cheer for their own athletes abroad and I wanted to compete like that in Ukraine”.
Lluna Casanova from Spain took second place in AA (48.100) and Farah Hussein from Egypt took third place (47.750).
The silver Worlds medalist on floor Artem Dolgopyat got a good score on the event in qualification (14.850) but made mistakes in the final and took only 6th place there despite having the highest difficulty among the finalists.
Dolgopyat’s floor routine from qualification:
This year, for the first time in a few years, Russian gymnasts planned to participate in the competition (because of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, gymnasts from Ukraine stopped attending the competitions in Russia and vice versa). Evgeniia Shelgunova and Alla Sosnitskaya were slated to compete and then Shelgunova got injured shortly before the competition. Sosnitskaya has been trying to recover from a series of injuries for a while. In the fall of 2017, there were talks about Sosnitskaya switching to compete for Georgia but she got injured and took a break from competition. A successful performance in Kiev could have made her case for the Georgian Federation (and the vice president of the federation even posted a photo of Sosnitskaya with Georgian gymnasts on his Facebook).
However, during the qualification, Sosnitskaya had a bad dismount from bars and broke her leg. In an interview, she said there’s also a possibility that she tore a ligament but it wasn’t possible to check at the moment because of the swelling. Sosnitskaya hasn’t had an injury-free season for a few years now and it seems that she just can’t catch a break.
See full results of the competition on TheGymter.net: MAG, WAG.
Photo: Stella Zakharova’s Facebook page.
