The inaugural Aurora Games will take place in Albany, NY between 19th and 25th of August. Aurora Games is a multi-sport competition celebrating female athletes. It includes both summer and winter sports, so it’s a rare occasion when fans can watch hockey and beach volleyball at the same competition. Aurora Games will be taking place every two years. Gymnastics will be represented by four sports at the competition: artistic gymnastics, aesthetic gymnastics, power tumbling, and parkour. The gymnastics competition in all four sports will take place on August 21st.
Artistic gymnasts will compete on beam and floor only and the competition will use a modified 10.0 system. Six gymnasts were invited to compete. US gymnasts Katelyn Ohashi, Mackenna Kelley, and Alicia Boren will represent Team Americas, while Danusia Francis (Jamaica), Marta Pihan-Kulesza (Poland), and Tatiana Nabieva (Russia) will represent Team World.
All three US gymnasts have graduated from college this year and finished their career in NCAA. For them, this competition will present an opportunity to compete professionally and finally earn money for their performances which was not possible while they still competed in NCAA.
In 2013, Katelyn Ohashi was one of the most promising gymnasts on the US national team and was one of the last people to beat Simone Biles in the all-around – at the 2013 American Cup. Injuries and emotional abuse led her to retire from elite gymnastics but she had a spectacular career in NCAA, helping UCLA to win the NCAA title in 2018 and having two of her floor routines go viral.
Mckenna Kelley competed for LSU and was a runner-up with her team at the 2019 NCAA Championships. In addition to her own gymnastics career, she is famous as a daughter of the first US Olympic all-around champion Mary Lou Retton.
Alicia Boren was a stellar competitor for the University of Florida and became a co-champion on floor at the 2019 NCAA Championships.
Danusia Francis used to compete for Great Britain and represented the country at Euros in 2011 and 2012 and Worlds in 2012. She was an alternate for the London Olympics and later that year started college at UCLA. In 2015, she came back to elite gymnastics and represented Jamaica at the World Championships. This year, Francis will try to qualify to the Tokyo Olympics through the World Championships.
Marta Pihan-Kulesza has been competing for Poland at senior competitions since 2005, when she became the Polish all-around champion for the first time. She represented Poland at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics but an injury prevented her from qualifying to the Rio Olympics. She came back to competition in 2018, after giving birth to her daughter, Jagna. Her floor routine set to Pink Panther theme is especially memorable and she decided to go back to it after briefly changing it in 2018.
Tatiana Nabieva’s participating at Aurora games became an unexpected but very nice surprise for the American fans. Despite the fact that she is very loved by fans in the US, she only competed there once, at a junior competition in 2005. Russian gymnasts are not frequent guests at American competitions and, in recent years, they have been skipping the American Cup and the Pacific Rim Championships. Nabieva won her first World medal back in 2010 but her career hasn’t always followed a straight path. After winning silver on bars at the 2011 World Championships, she had some issues in 2012 and became an alternate for the 2012 Olympics. She retired and un-retired a few times since then but managed an extremely fast return to the competition every single time. This year, she was added back to the national team after her stellar performance at the Russian Championships and competed at the Summer Universiade, where she won two silvers (team and bars) and a bronze (vault).
Because of an injury, Nabieva was not able to compete all-around at the Universiade but gave the fans this beam routine as a gift.
The competition will be shown on ESPN U in the US. More information on streams is coming later.
Фото: Елена Михайлова, Федерация спортивной гимнастики России
