Three future collegiate gymnasts in the class of 2021 will compete at the European championships in Basel, Switzerland, this week. Penn State signee Elina Vihrova will represent Latvia, while Oregon State signee Phoebe Jakubczyk and California commit Amelie Morgan will represent Great Britain.
Vihrova competed at two world championships in 2018 and 2019, as well as three European championships in 2016, 2019 and 2020. In Mersin, Turkey, in 2020 she finished fifth on beam. She also participated at the Szombathely world cup in Hungary in 2020, where she won silver on beam.
Jakubczyk and Morgan were both members of the bronze medal-winning British team at the 2018 junior European championships in Glasgow, Scotland. Morgan also won silver medals in the all around and on beam, and bronze medals on vault and floor. That year, she also competed at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she earned silver medals in the all around and on floor, as well as a bronze on beam.
In 2019, Morgan competed at the European championships in Szczecin, Poland, where she finished fifth in the all around, while Jakubczyk won a silver medal on bars at Szombathely world cup.
In Basel, they will compete against some of the best gymnasts in Europe. The Russian federation will send Olympic medalist Angelina Melnikova, as well as junior world champions Viktoriia Listunova, Vladislava Urazova and Elena Gerasimova, who will likely represent Russia at the Olympic Games this summer.
Olympic and world medalists Larisa Iordache of Romania and Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland will also continue their comeback campaign in Basel after struggling with injuries this quad, while Italy’s Vanessa Ferrari will compete in the all around internationally for the first time since the 2017 world championships.
Qualifications will start at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. EST) on Wednesday, April 21. All around qualifiers will compete at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, April 23, while event finals will take place on Saturday, April 24 and Sunday, April 25, starting at 1:30 p.m. and 1 p.m., respectively.
Qualifications will be broadcasted on GYMTV.online, while the finals are on Eurovision Sports.
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Article by Talitha Ilacqua
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Is Amelie Morgan still a Cal committ?
She recently removed any mention of going to Cal from her Instagram recently.
Makes me wonder if she backed out.
She hasn’t officially decommitted or recommitted anywhere, but she has followed a variety of other teams, coaches and gymnasts. Something to keep an eye on for sure! For now, we left her as a Cal commit for the purposes of this article since there’s been no official announcement.