The International Gymnastics Federation has announced the dates of the first Junior World Championships. It will take place on 27-30 of July inGyör, Hungary. For now, there is no official information about the format but the unofficial sources are saying that there will only be an individual all-around and event finals without a team competition. This also fits the dates – it would hardly be possible to fit both team and AA competition and the event finals for both WAG and MAG in just three days. This event will be sort of a test. The FIG will see if there’s interest and make a decision on whether to continue holding this competition.
However, the dates for such a test are less than ideal. Junior competitions generally draw a much smaller crowd – just look at the arena at any junior Euros. In addition to that, the competition is held at exactly the same dates as the European Games. So, the fans are being divided between two major competitions taking place in Eastern Europe on exactly the same dates. Add to that the fact that the Summer Universiade starts right after, also in Europe. And then only a month later, the European Youth Olympic Festival is taking place in Baku. Holding the test event and trying to gauge the interest of the public while another, bigger and more attractive competition is going on, is not exactly the best strategy. The TV channels (at least the European ones) will also be more likely to show the European Games and not the Junior Worlds. The dates for the European Games and the Universiade were known for a while now, so this scheduling conflict could have been avoided.
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