Australian women will miss out on World Championships

Australian women will miss out on World Championships

Sep 2, 2013 by Anne Phillips
Australian women will miss out on World Championships

Georgia Godwin and Mary-Ann Monckton at the World Trial. Photo by Gymnastics Australia. 

Gymnastics Australia and National Coach Peggy Liddick determined today that Australia will not send any women's competitors to the upcoming World Championships in Antwerp. As they prepare for 2016, Austrailia is looking for event finals and medals rather than competition experience. 

The country's final trial took place today. The two athletes in contention, Mary-Ann Monckton and Georgia Godwin, came just shy of the high qualification standards put in place by Gymnastics Australia for all of its "Olympic Gymsports". 

Monckton and Godwin were both vying for selection on balance beam. In order to advance to Worlds, they were required to achieve a 6.3 D-score and 14.80 final score but just missed the mark for Antwerp scoring 6.1/14.10 and 6.2/13.90 respectively. Coach Liddick praised the girls for the work they had done to improve their difficulty and performances since the Australian Championships and noted that they were now ‘setting the pace’ for other Australian athletes working towards podium finishes at benchmark events between now and the 2016 Olympic Games.

According to the press release, these qualifying scores are the results of the Australian Sports Commission’s ‘Winning Edge’ strategy. Gymnastics Australia increased selection scores for all Olympic Gymsports to reflect the performance standards that athletes would be required to meet in order to qualify for finals and win medals at World Championship events in 2013 and beyond.

Gymnastics Australia stated that the National Team will now shift its focus back to skill and routine development in the hopes of building world class performances. The next domestic competition will be the National Club Championships in November. Internationally, the Aussies are eyeing April's Pacific Rim Championships in Vancouver as their 2014 competition debut. 

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