ANAHEIM, California, 18 August 2003 — Holders Belarus looked to have lost all hope of successfully defending their men’s team title in the World Gymnastics CSaturday.
hampionships after a bad injury to one of their top competitors on Dimitri Kasparovich crashed on his final tumbling sequence during the floor exercises and crawled off the mat. He was found to have torn his Achilles tendon and will need surgery, according to teammate Ivan Ivankov.
Kasparovich’s absence badly hit Belarus, who were ranked seventh after their tests. But with top teams such as China, the United States, France and Ukraine to compete today, it looked unlikely that the defending champions would claim one of the eight places for the final.
The top 12 men’s and women’s teams will gain a berth in next year’s Athens Olympics. “Kasparovich was supposed to be in the final on vault and even floor exercise,” Ivankov said.
“He was a good gymnast in our team but now it’s not so easy though we have our goals.”
Japan, who skipped the 2001 World Championships because of fears over terrorism, took the lead with 227.046 points ahead of Romania (224.770), Russia (223.380). Canada, Spain, Germany, Belarus and Cuba rounded off the top eight.
Japan’s Naoya Tsukahara led the men’s all-round race with 57.224 points over Romania’s Marian Dragulescu (56.650) and Japan’s Hiroyuki Tomita (56.424).
Russia lost Evgueni Krylov to an Achilles injury after he crashed on the floor exercise. Like Kasparovich, Krylov had to crawl off the mat.
Gymnasts from several countries have complained about the hardness of the floor mat at the Anaheim arena.
The other surprise of the day came on the high bar where twice defending world champion Vlasios Maras of Greece made a bad error, scored only 9.337 and failed to make the final.
The top eight men’s and women’s nations reach the team final and the top 24 men and women qualify for the all-round final. The top eight finishers in each event qualify for that apparatus final.
