For the first time in years, Israeli men’s team has a large roster with several standouts, so there’s suddenly a real chance for Israel to be a serious team competitor and the program is doing everything not to miss that chance. Since last Worlds, they have been to international camps of various length every month and decided to forgo individual World Cups for the sake of the team’s competition. Yesterday, Israeli MAG team became 9th in Stuttgart’s team challenge. Some of the routines, especially on pommel horse and high bar, lack difficulty, but Artem Dolgopyat had a very impressive showing on floor with a massive 15.1 score.
There is still room for improvement until the World Championships in October and this team competed without Alexander Shatilov who’s still recovering from an injury but can potentially bring really good scores. Shatilov has been posting some videos of him training specifically high bar and pommel horse on Instagram.
On the new Instagram account of the Israeli MAG program, there was an announcement that Israel aims to make top-24 in Doha and qualify to the 2019 Worlds as a team. I guess with the amount of money the federation is currently investing in the team’s training (and Honda recently became a sponsor, too), it is safe to assume that they found a way to secure visas to Qatar for the Israeli athletes. Qatar and Israel do not have diplomatic relationships and in the past, there were several cases of Israeli athletes missing important international competitions because they were held in Qatar. however, just last month a school handball team from Israel participated in a competition in Qatar, so this gives hope that Israeli gymnasts won’t have to miss the Olympic-qualifying Worlds.
Photo: Artem Dolgopyat’s Facebook page
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