Maria Paseka competed at the European Championships since the surgery. She is currently only competing vault (even though she is training bars and hoping to come back on floor later, as well). Her first vault, a Cheng, didn’t go quite well as she overdid her run, had issues in the air and then fell on the landing. However, she then did a great Amanar and her 14.133 should be enough for the final, as this is relatively weak vault field this year.
She was unhappy with her vaults but really glad to be back competing again:
“The vault went badly because I fell. I ran a bit too far and because of that, the whole vault was completely off. Well, of course, that’s not an excuse. I hope that I’ll do much better in the final. It’s just that I went first here, I had to vault right after the warmup, it was a bit hard for me”.
Paseka was really glad to experience the competition atmosphere again and commented on how it’s very exciting and a bit weird to see new girls turning senior and compete with them while she’s been competing for a while. I imagine this is a feeling that Chusovitina is very much familiar with.
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