Petrounias’ Olympic hopes lessen
2016 Olympic gold medalist Eleftherios Petrounias finished second at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Cottbus, Germany, and is now likely to miss out on qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
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Petrounias finished second in the men’s rings with a score of 14.866, behind China’s Liu Yang (15.133). This win gave Yang 30 points to add to his World Cup ranking, and he now sits in first place with 90 points, as it is the third event that he won. Petrounias got 25 points for his second place finish, and this was the only World Cup event he competed in during the past year, as he missed 11 months of competition due to injury and only recently returned last month.
Only the top three scores from each participant are included in the ranking, and there are three World Cup events remaining before the Olympics. As only the first-placed gymnast in the standings will qualify for the Olympics, this means that Petrounias will have to win each of the three remaining World Cup events in order to stand a chance of making it to Tokyo. The next World Cup event is in February in Melbourne, Australia.
Should Petrounias win all three remaining events, he would be tied with Yang, as Yang can no longer gain any more points. Then, Petrounias would need better scores than Yang in order to overtake him via tiebreaker and get the last spot for Tokyo. It should be noted that Petrounias’ first chance to qualify for Tokyo was at last month’s World Championships, but the Greek finished fourth and needed to reach the podium in order to secure Olympic qualification.
