In the weekend of October 25th and 26th the Flanders Cup was organised in sports hal Arena van
Vletingen in Gent. Four Dutch clubs participated also: SV Pax, De Badhoeve, OBQ and SVOD.
For Pax, Christel, Roxanne, Maaike and I participated. We arrived on Friday October 24th and that
afternoon we had training in the competition hall. It's really a great hall, but only the space
for training during the competition is very very small.
After the training we went to our host family. Maaike and I were at this tournament last
year and we stayed with the same family again. We stayed all at the same family this time, so
it was very cosy.
Saterday was competition day. Christel competed in espoirs competition. It was her first
big international tournament, so she had some mistakes. But after all she did quite good and
she became 22nd of about 28th gymnasts. The other Dutch participants in this category were
Linda de Geus from SVOD and Sharai Echteld from de Badhoeve, but I can't remember how they ended.
The little girls from Bulgaria really dominated this competition, they were really very very good.
In the afternoon, Roxanne competed in junior competition. She started with clubs, a very strong routine, except one difficulty in the beginning that she couldn't perform rightly and a little drop later. Her ribbon routine was a litlle bit harder, the stick kept jumping out of her hand when she wanted to catch, but rope and ball were good routines again. She ended on a very good 13th place of 23 gymnasts. With clubs she was even on a 8th place, but only six gymnasts plus one gymnasts of the organizing club Forza Ritmica were permitted to compete in the finals...
Then finally at half past six the first rotation of seniors started their competition. Every competition
was divided into two rotations, because of the large number of gymnasts. Maaike was in the first
rotation, but I was in second so I really had to wait very long (we were in the sports hall since
half past eleven). Maaike did very good routines, no big mistakes only she had not enough music
to perform all difficulties totally.
I started in second rotation with my ball routine, it was a new routine but it went pretty good.
In my opinion, ball was my best that day, but the mark wasn't very high. Hoop and clubs were okay, but
ribbon was really not good.
The senior competition was won by Svetlana Putintseva from Russia, I really like her! 2nd was Hannah Walker from
England. In the juniorcompetition also a Hannah competed for England and she was really very good and cute. She has
an amazing back flexibility. The bronze medal was won by Mojca Rode from Slovenia. After the
competition we heard that I ended on 8th place and Maaike on 10th. This was a very good result, since
I had only beaten one other gymnast on this competition last year. I was even in two finals -
with hoop and clubs. Maaike was 8th with one apparatus so she was very close too.
The competition ended only about ten o'clock and before we went to bed it was really late, because we were going to watch a movie first. This is getting some kind of tradition, we did it last year too, only this time I still had a competition to do the next day. Fortunately we could sleep late Sunday morning.
I was really nervous for the apparatus finals. I had never been in any final before, except
for the finals on the Duch Championships... I had to start with hoop, what wasn't really a great routine, but
my clubs routine went very good. I was 7th with hoop and 6th with clubs.
The competition for clubs was won by Levski Sofia. SV Pax became 8th.
After de competition there was a gala, a banquet and then we went home. It was really a great
competition and I hope we will go back next year!