Two Russian gymnasts suffered injury on Monday at the
preliminaries of the Stuttgart world gymnastics championships,
putting their Olympic berth in danger.
Two Russians Nikolai Kryukov and Anton Golotsutskov suffered
frustrating injury on the opening apparatus, the vault, and limped
through the qualifying round.
If they failed to recover in time before team finals two days
later, Russia's anticipating place in the Beijing Olympics is set
to hang up.
Russia is last year's silver medalists at the Aarhus worlds,
Denmark, ahead of the mistake-ridden Japanese team.
Kryukov, the 1999 all-round champion, was in serious limping and
needed an ice-pack nursing on left knee between rotations.
Golotsutskov's twisted left ankle set him barrier on floor and
forced him to quit high-difficulty routine.
European all-around champion Maxim Deviatovski shrugged off the
dilemma to stand out in provisional all-around third behind
Japanese duo.
Deviatovski swayed his stance for team finals and worried for
his teammates' doom.
"It's maybe a half chance for us to make the team finals," he
said. "You work for four years to get to the Olympic Games, it's
the most important thing."
"If they can't recover soon, we will plunge into big
trouble."
The world championships are serving as Olympic qualifiers, with
the top 12 teams going to next year's Beijing Games.
Russia piled up 362.175, trailing temporary leaders Japan by
8.550 points.
Japan presented very impressive performance in the qualification
and earned a better score than the reigning champions, China, did
last year at Aarhus worlds.
The 2005 all-around top two Hiroyuki Tomita and Hisashi Mizutori
grasped the one-two finish after the two subdivisions'
qualifying.
On the horizontal bar, five Japanese swept the top five and
clinched top three in floor rankings before Chinese team takes
action later.
Makoto Okiguchi, a debutant, said they could defeat China if
they keep up the form like the qualifying session.
(Xinhua News Agency September 4, 2007)