As a part of the preparations for the 2025 WAG and MAG European Championships, Tel Aviv became one of the hosts for one of the World Challenge Cups. The series kicked off in Varna over the past weekend, will continue in Tel Aviv and Osijek over the next two weeks and then will resume in the fall with World Cups in Mersin, Szombathely, and Paris.
On paper, the idea of three back to back World Cups around the Mediterranean region might sound good, especially for countries who have to travel from outside of Europe and don’t want to come to each World Challenge Cup separately. After all, it’s only a two-hour flight from Varna to Tel Aviv and a three-hour flight from Tel Aviv to Belgrade (the closest airport to Osijek that has direct flights from Tel Aviv). Some of the gymnasts actually appear on the roster for all three Cups and others are combining Varna and Tel Aviv or Tel Aviv and Osijek. At the same time, three competitions with only a couple of days of rest between them at most is a difficult schedule and the Tel Aviv Cup ended up the most sparsely attended of the three. Still, the competition promises to be quite exciting and Saturday finals are already sold out.
The qualification will take place on Thursday and Friday (3 pm to 6 pm local time) and the finals will be on Saturday ( 3:30 pm to 6 pm) and Sunday (3 pm to 6 pm). There is no information about the live stream yet.
The biggest name of the competition is, of course, the Olympic gold medalist Artem Dolgopyat. His teammate Andrey Medvedev will compete for the vault title and Alexander Myakinin will compete on high bar. The reigning European all-around champion Adem Asil is scheduled to compete on four events.
On the women’s side, Israel’s veteran Ofir Netzer will try for a medal on vault and the 2020 Olympian Lihie Raz will compete on all four events. Australia sent a large MAG and WAG delegation to Tel Aviv which includes Georgia Godwin who became the Australian all-around champion only two weeks ago. European balance beam medalist Marine Boyer will compete on beam and bars.
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