European Championships in Zaragoza

European Championships 2000

European Championships 2000 - Ukraine fifth gymnastics country in Europe

This report I'd like to start from the end - soon after this European Championships, 6 judges, among them Irina Deruigina, got a year of judging disqualification, which meant that Irina Deruigina and Co won't be able to judge for 4 years. Why did it happen? Because of Elena Vitrichenko

Now let's start from the very beginning. On Deruigina Cup 2000 Elena Vitrichenko, the winner of Deruigina Cup 97,98 and 99 got 10th place in the AA and didn't qualify in any finals. Yes, maybe, best Lena's competitions were in the past, but she doesn't have the routines for the 10th place. As usual such things are made by someone in gymnastics and in this case there were Deruigins. In the beginning of February Deruigins and Vitrichenkos had a huge row and Elena had to leave the Deruigins school and go to train in the worse conditions. The plan of Irina and Albina Deruigina was seen very well - Anna Bessonova goes to Olympics instead of Elena Vitrichenko, which sounded a bit nonsense

They continued to underscore Vitrichenko's points on European Championships 2000. And what did they get? Ukraine was almost 6th, but thanks to the mistake of Susanna Marchesi with the last catch of the team event with rope, Ukraine became 5th. 3 scores (ball, rope, ribbon) of Elena Vitrichenko were ridiculous, according to the results of the qualification Elena was 19 (!) in the AA. She refused to compete in the AA and each gymnast, each coach could understand her disappointment. What did Deruigins get? There is such rule that if two gymnasts per country are in top 18 on the European Championships 2000, then on European Championships 2001 this country can be presented by 2 gymnasts, if there is only one gymnast, this country will be presented by 1 gymnast. So as Elena refused to do AA, Ukraine had only one gymnast for EC 2001. Not very good tactic, miss Irina Deruigina

Well, and if to talk about the results, they were quite ridiculous too. Alina Kabaeva had 2 "dead" tosses of the rope and received 9,983 and Yulia Raskina performed a perfect rope and also received 9,983. Alina won gold with a tie, but is this gold worth anything if judges were looking on the ceiling when Alina was performing her routines?

Tamara Yerofeeva was very clean in the AA, but somehow was only 5th. She stood in the balance for a minute with rope, until her music was found. Maybe Deruigins thought that leaving the Championships without a medal won't be very good, so they "gave" the silver for Toma with rope