The other continental championships taking place this week in Pretoria/Tshwane, South Africa. WAG competition on Friday, MAG on Saturday. I think last year all we got from this competition was a PDF of the results at the end of the day.
WAG teams from Egypt, South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon, plus individuals from Mali and Senegal.
MAG teams for Egypt, Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Morocco and South Africa plus one individual from Senegal.
There was a junior competition last year but I haven’t seen anything about one this year.
Kaylia Nemour is on the list for Algeria and does have an FIG licence now. Egypt’s team includes Sandra Elsadek of the Georgia NCAA team. (Did she ever compete under the FIG code before NCAA?)
There are Worlds qualification spots for 1 team and 4 individuals in WAG, 1 team and 2 individuals for MAG.
Egypt won the WAG team title by 3.5 points last year and MAG by 13 points. However, the South African women did go on to record a higher score at the Commonwealth Games (comparing scores from different competitions I know), and any advantage of competing at home will be reversed this year, so this could be interesting.
There also appears to be some sort of friendly meet between a South Africa B team and a Welsh junior team going on in the arena in the mornings. This apparently has apparatus finals but as far as I can see the African Championships don’t??
As well as the obvious with Kaylia, I’m sooooo glad South Africa won. Loved them at CWG last year and it seemed a real shame they weren’t going to be in Liverpool.
A 53.731 is no joke, and that is with the layout pass on floor exercise.
She’s got to be a favorite to make the Olympics through qualification at Worlds and I anticipate that she’'ll make the AA final with a similar performance.
This UB exercise in insane! If the “Komobieva” aka “Nemour” is rated at a G, and she doesn’t have the Rična 1/2 devalued, then she is able to get a 7,1 D-score with only THIRTEEN skills in total! #%$& AMAZING!
That routine is incredible. And there are definitely details she’ll be working on before worlds. That with her almost certainly improving on that floor (replacing the third pass with a 1.5 or double full?) before Worlds–looking forward to see her in the AA finals.
ETA: a 53.731 would have qualified her in 15th to the AA last year and placed 10th in the final
crazy!