Mara Titarsolej spent more about two years recovering from her ankle injury. She last competed at an international competition back in 2016, at the European Championships, and then briefly returned to competition in 2017 for one meet. Last week she competed at her first meet after the break, at the Zuri-Oberland Cup in Switzerland where she won the all-around. Titarsolej told The Force is Grace before the competition that she wanted to gain more competition experience before competing at the Dutch Championships in June:
“We wanted to do a meet before the National Championships. This was a suitable moment to try out my routines. Of course, the Nationals Championships are the most important in the end. On floor and vault, I will still be doing basic routines, but on beam and bars, I hope to compete my routines at almost full difficulty. The most important thing is to gain experience again towards the National Championships.”
She had only 4.2 D on vault and 4.4 D on floor at this competition but hopes to upgrade by the nationals, if possible:
“I’m still working on that. It’s not fully there yet, but it’s in the right direction. Some weeks I can make more progress than other weeks. It’s going with ups and downs, but that’s part of it. It’s getting better and better, but I have to make sure not to want to go too fast or set the bar too high for myself. That’s why I constantly set small goals for myself. After that, I’ll look further. The coming time, I want to get the best out of it for myself. We’ll see what that brings me in the end.”
Titarsolej has been working hard on her comeback since last year. An injury to right ankle kept her sidelined for quite some time, but now the energy and the motivation are fully back:
“I’m really looking forward to it again. I don’t realize that I’ll be competing again that well. Which is why I’m not nervous about it yet. But that will definitely come.”
She has passed her high school exams but wants to take a gap year for now:
“I don’t know what I want to do in college yet. So I’ll take a gap year. That year, I’ll completely focus on gymnastics.”
Translation from Dutch by Kim.
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