Not everything is going well for the German gymnasts at the start of the European Championship. Nevertheless, they reach the team final and want to improve. Not all mistakes are the athletes’ fault. The national coach admits a mistake.
Andreas Toba scolded after his bar exercise. An incorrectly adjusted bar cost the Hanoverians and the German team important points at the European Gymnastics Championships in Munich.
Tomba as well as Lukas Dauser (Unterhaching), Nils Dunkel (Erfurt), Glenn Trebing (Hannover) and debutant Lukas Kochan (Cottbus) reached the team final of the top eight on August 20 (2:45 p.m.) in seventh place. With 245.659 points in the six-way battle of pommel horse, rings, vault, bars, high bar and floor, the squad of the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) was a good ten points behind the qualification winner Great Britain.
“I had expected three finals”
Four days after the conclusion of the women’s competitions with the titles for Elisabeth Seitz (Stuttgart) on uneven bars and Emma Malewski (Chemnitz) on balance beam, the German men were still far from medal form and need to improve significantly for the team final. The Brit Joe Fraser became the all-around European champion with 85.565 points ahead of the Turks Ahmet Onder (85.131) and Adem Asil (84.465). All-around champion Dauser was the ninth best German with 82.164 points.
The 29-year-old qualified with 14.766 points for Sunday’s apparatus finals on parallel bars, where he finished second at the Tokyo Olympics. In addition to Unterhachinger, only Dunkel reached a singles final. The 25-year-old from Erfurt scored 14.366 points on horseback and has outsider chances on Sunday. “I had expected three finals,” said national coach Valeri Belenki, but praised his gymnasts: “I would like to thank the boys for a great performance – unfortunately not on all apparatus.”
“We didn’t close the spar properly”
In particular, his team, with the exception of Dauser, had little success on the actual flagship device, the parallel bars. “Everything went perfectly on the parallel bars in training,” said Belenki. To a certain extent, he was partly responsible for this due to negligence in preparing the device for Andreas Toba. “We didn’t close the bar properly,” admitted the national coach. It was his fault. “I stand by that too.”
As a result, the distance between the bars was too large for Andreas Toba. The Hanoverian estimated that the bars were “10.15 centimeters too wide” apart, “especially in the part where you can’t see the bars, it’s very difficult to reach for a bar if it’s not where it is actually is.” He then complained about it, but didn’t want to blame the national coach for the mishap. “It has nothing to do with being angry. These are mistakes that happen. We have two or three control mechanisms that all failed one after the other today. That’s part of it. I always try to find the mistakes in myself,” he said in perspective.
“It starts from scratch on Saturday”
Nevertheless, the quintet is confident about the team final. “We’ll start from zero on Saturday. We’re seventh, I hope we can improve. The leading nations are already extremely strong. But if we could move up one or two places, it would be nice,” said Dauser. He sees the women who won bronze as a team as role models: “Of course they encourage us, but not with regard to the bronze medal. They are an incentive because they did their thing with just one fall. That’s a goal, which would also be nice for us on Saturday if we go out with a gymnastic exercise of 18. That would be a good competition.”
Source: Stern
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