The reigning World beam champion Liu Tingting has been long known as a fabulous beam and bars gymnast. She was also quite a good all-arounder as a junior and new senior but an ankle injury in 2017 led to to focus on mostly just two events.
Liu won the all-around at the Chinese Championships that took place last week, getting a very respectable 55.950 on the second day of competition. She is currently doing only a full-twisting Yurchenko on vault and her floor difficulty is just 4.7 but she managed to snatch a bronze medal in the floor final thanks to her high execution score. In an interview to local media, she credited the new head coach Qiao [Liang Chow] with her success in the all-around:
“Training in 2019 has been going very well so far. Coach Qiao’s training has helped me improve my leg strength and overall physical fitness.”
She actually had issues on her signature event in this competition and first did not make the event final because of two-per-province rule:
“I think my balance beam performance was a pity since I ran overtime a little, however, I still made the floor final and I will do my best to do well.”
She later replaced her teammate Luo Rui and competed in the beam final but didn’t have a successful performance and finished fourth.
After her success during the 2018 World Championships, Tingting believes she can do even better in 2019:
“As long as my ankle injury is dealt with properly, I have confidence I can do well in this year’s World Championships and next year’s Olympic Games.”
Translation from Chinese by Daniel Rothwell.
