TeamGym News! The TeamGym Newsletter N° 14 - September 2022

Welcome to the 14th edition of the TeamGym Newsletter!

There is less than a week left to the 14th TeamGym European Championships with the highest number of participating federations ever!

The European Championships will for the first time be held in Luxembourg, hosted by Fédération Luxembourgeoise de Gymnastique (FLGym).

From Wednesday 14 to Saturday 17 September, Europe's best TeamGym seniors and juniors will gather in the National Sports and Culture Centre d'Coque for an exciting battle for the medals. Some gymnasts are participating in an international competition for the first time, while others have a long experience competing at numerous European Championships.

But which teams will end up on the podium? Who will challenge the current gold medalists from last year’s event in December 2021? We will know the outcome after the junior finals on September 16th and the senior finals on September 17^th.

 

The 2022 TeamGym European Championships will gather a record-breaking 17 federations and 51 competing teams, altogether nearly 600 gymnasts. At the previous event, in Guimaraes (POR), 14 federations competed with 38 teams.

All countries present before the COVID-19 pandemic are now back on the field of play.

The women’s sections are increasing and are now the largest, with 23 competing teams. The mixed sections are slightly smaller than expected, most likely due to the challenges of training together during the pandemic.

Considering the recent increase in the number of teams, the TeamGym Technical Committee (TG-TC) will for 2024 consider different options to improve the competition schedule.

The new TeamGym Code of Points came into effect on January 1^st, 2022, and will be valid for three years (2022-2024). The Committee extends a warm thank you to all federations, judges, coaches and gymnasts who provided feedback and support on the development.

The key changes compared to the previous Code of Points are:

• New composition requirements in Floor to enhance the flow of the choreography
• Updated composition requirements in Tumble and Trampet for increased variation of elements/moves
• Greater emphasis on quality of execution and good landings
• Improved balance between Difficulty and Execution - within apparatus and between the different sections: Men, Mixed and Women
• More extensive clarification of requirements and element definitions
• Supplementary illustrations to make the Code easier to understand among judges and coaches
• Maintained focus on speeding up the judging

The new Code of Points required all judges to requalify to maintain their European Gymnastics TeamGym brevet. To reduce the risk of late cancellations and extra costs due to COVID-19 testing, the TG-TC offered two online courses in February and April/May 2022. An online exam was given 3-4 weeks after each course.

All brevet judges of the 2017-2021 cycle that passed the online exam retained their TeamGym brevet and category level. New judges who passed the online exam received the TeamGym brevet category three and were offered to take part in a live exam to raise their category level.

The two online courses during the first half of 2022 resulted in almost 90 judges now holding the European Gymnastics TeamGym Brevet. This is a 20% increase in the number of judges compared to the previous cycle (2017-2020).

As an experience of the pandemic, the online courses showed that a mix of online and shorter live courses is preferable for future judges' education. The plan is to organise the following brevet judges' courses this way.

Hopefully, we can now enter the post-COVID phase, change focus from webinars on Zoom and return to holding face-to-face coaching courses and camps. Scheduling of next year's events will commence directly after the European Championships. Don't be surprised to see some new coaches' education opportunities showing up as digital or semi-digital. The new tools to create online digital courses will soon be in place through the European Gymnastics webpage.

Last year we wrote about the request for additional international TeamGym competitions to benefit club development and provide international competition experience for their gymnasts, coaches, and judges.

The TG-TC agreed to act as facilitators to establish such an event. Two weeks ago, information about the first Mid-European Championships was launched by Federazione Ginnastica d'Italia (FGI) in close cooperation with the club Dinamic Gym. The first event is scheduled for 16-19 November 2023 in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy. See Mid-European Teamgym Championships 2023.

This new competition will add another international TeamGym event to the calendar and enable clubs to compete internationally in the odd years in between the European Championships.

From an organising and responsibility point of view, this is a national event, and we forsee that the baton to organise future events will be transferred between the participating Mid-European federations.

In this context, it is also worth mentioning that in early April, a US junior team from Houston, Texas, participated in the Danish National Championships series in Helsinge (DEN). In late June, two teams from GF Kennedy, Sweden, went overseas to compete in the Power TeamGym International section at the USA Gymnastics for All National Championships & GymFest in Springfield, Illinois.

The next European Championships in 2024 will almost certainly be an Open European Championships welcoming teams from all FIG continents. Opening the Championships was initially the idea for the event in 2020, but travel restrictions and sealed borders made the world more closed than ever. There is indeed a great interest in TeamGym, also from non-European countries.

Let us together spread the word about our fantastic sport!

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Next stop is Luxembourg, I am looking forward to seeing you and feel the TeamGym spirit in the National Sports and Culture Centre d’Coque!

Per Sjostrand

TeamGym-TC President