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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Ukrainians Have Always Known How To Somersault

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

By Oleksandr HONCHARUK, The Day
There are not many sports in this country where we are always sure to win
medals in high-level competitions. One of them is acrobatics, with the
championship of Europe just over in the Polish city of Zelena Gora.

Alumni of the Ukrainian school have always known how to turn somersaults
with special brilliance, especially in unison. Small wonder, then, that
the heaviest applause was drawn by the Kyiv men's quartet composed of Yuri
and Serhiy Ovsiannykov, Ruslan Kyianytsia, and Valery Luchko. The pupils
of our well-known coach Yuri Koshuba won two gold medals (including overall
first place) and a silver.

A good match for them was also the women's trio from Kyiv - Alla Kovposha,
Olena Kosenko, and Hanna Demydenko - which won the gold in balancing exercise
and the silver in the team rankings. The girls managed to do so in spite
of their competing together for a very short time, while for the 14-year-old
Alla Kovposha it was her first appearance on the European stage.

"The boys and girls had trained themselves very well for this competition,"
national team chief coach Leonid Holiak told The Day. "They won
prizes in every category, garnering a total 12 medals: 3 gold, 3 silver,
and 6 bronze. They were a little short of winning in the team classification,
losing by two points to the Russians but overtaking the Belarusians. But
for a disappointing failure of three-time gold medalists at last year's
junior championship of Europe Oleksiy Snarsky and Volodymyr Tatarchuk in
the original composition (it knocked them out of the top six), the national
team of Ukraine would now be the absolute leader.

 

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