The No Limits Open tournament was held on May 30 and 31. It was the third time this
tournament was organized by the Belgium club No Limits gymnastics.
I participated in this tournament, together with Anna Pobokova and Sanne Kouters. We're all
from a different club and only one coach was allowed to come with us. So in the beginning
Marina Avtouchenko, Anna's coach, would come to Belgium. But later it turned to Zoya
Kolesnik, the coach of Sanne.
We went to Belgium on Thursday. My father drove me to Motel Dennenhof. It was supposed to
be at Bredabaan 940, but when we came there, it was everything but a motel. It was some kind
of building company or something. Later it turned out that there were two numbers 940, the
other one was about ten minutes away. Very good start, not?
In the motel they called our host family to bring us to the training hall. Training went
very bad, but whatever... It was very hot, by the way, especially when you was jumping and
doing your routines.
Anna wasn't there yet, because she lives very near Antwerpen. She would come next morning
for the competition. It was just Sanne, Zoya and me, the judge Jolanda Sap would come that
evening for the technical meeting. After the training we should go to Antwerpen with our
host family (really very nice people) but we were pretty tired so we stayed at home and
watched television. It was very easy that we were in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium,
by the way.
Today was competition day. We only had to be in the sports hall at one o'clock for the
opening ceremony, so we could stay in bed long. Our competition started at four o'clock.
My routines went fine, no big mistakes. But I can do better. (Always off course ;D)
The youngest category, mini-benjamins, didn't have finals, so they did their competition
on Saturday. The youngest category today were the benjamins. In this category Amber Heijdens
from the organizing club won. She really is amazing and I'm sure we will hear a lot of her
in the future. By the way, almost all those benjamins were very good.
In hopes category Natalia Pichuzhkina from Russia won. All gymnast got a lot of presents.
It really was a cool tournament.
Today Sanne and I could watch the competition, because we weren't in the finals. But Anna had them all
four! She did very good too, a first place with ball and a second place with ribbon!
The mini-benjamins had their All Around competition today. It was won by Karolina
Sevastianova from Russia. In this category an Estonian girl competed who was only five years
old!
After the finals there was a gala with a lot of cool demonstrations and a closing
ceremony, with presents again!
The banquet should start at nine o'clock, but we were home at 8:15 hours. Then we had to
take a shower and pack all our bags and so... Finally, we were there at 9:45. And because we
should drive back home at 11 o'clock it wasn't very long.
I hope I can go back to this tournament again next year, 'cause it was really very nice and
well-organized.