Glasgow World Cup 2016
It was another historic day for Great Britain with three World Cup All Around medals for British gymnasts in front of a packed home crowd in the Emirates Arena Glasgow.
World Champion Max Whitlock took gold in the men’s competition after an impressive performance, finishing ahead of Brazil’s Arthur Nory Oyakawa Mariano in silver with Britain’s Dan Purvis clinching the bronze.
In the women’s event, BRISTOL HAWKS & GB’s CLAUDIA FRAGAPANE took the bronze behind the USA’s Mckayla Skinner and Germany’s Elizabeth Seitz.
With three competitors and three medals, it was an impressive outing for the GB team in one of the first major competitions of the season.
For Claudia, who was competing for the first time since the World Championships in 2015, it was a great chance to perform once again in front of the fantastic audience that always welcomes the gymnasts to Glasgow and also to test out some new elements she’s preparing for 2016 season. She started well with her double twisting Yurchenko earning her second place behind USA’s vault specialist, Skinners, very impressive Amanar. On bars Claudia successfully completed her new Shaposhnikova start but was unfortunate to slip on her well established Jaeger salto, this dropped her down the standings coming to beam. In typical gutsy fashion Claudia stuck with her tricky beam routine including two new high level elements: standing arabian & flick combined into full twisting straight back somersault, she rounded off the routine with both a standing tuck full twist and a dismount combination of double flick into double pike. This impressive routine was the top score of the day on this apparatus and pulled her back up the rankings putting her in a position to fight for the medals on floor. Claudia’s floor is packed with high difficulty elements and she has the highly rated double straight right at the end. This early in the season the decision was made to stick with her 2015 elements and save her upgrades for later in the year. However, her floor has been tweaked as we were given the unique opportunity to work with the lovely and fantastic James Johnstone, band member of PigBag, who worked on the cut of the music from his original version to provide a bespoke cut for Claudia. Performing her floor with her usual pizzazz Claudia got the crowd on her side and they were all clapping along by the time she hit her first full in back out straight tumble. She finished fantastically with just enough energy to land her last tumble and sneak in her signature backspin to once again top score on this apparatus. It was more than enough to lift her into bronze medal position and was a brilliant start to what I’m sure will be a very exciting year. Well Done Claudia.