ANOTHER SUCCESS

Azerbaijan hosted the first international competition of 2023. On February 18-19, the Trampoline World Cup was held at the National Gymnastics Arena in Baku.

For the sixth time in Azerbaijan, 62 gymnasts from 15 countries competed in the event. The tournament will be remembered for the successful performance of Seljan Maqsudova in the individual programme. She confidently finished the qualification round as the third best and reached the finals. On this stage, she received 53,510 points and won a bronze medal of the tournament.

Among the woman athletes, the first and second places were awarded to Camilla Gomes from Brazil (54,860) and Lea Labrousse (53,970) from France, respectively.

Danil Musabayev of Kazakhstan topped the individual trampoline event (59,240). Spain's Jorge Martin took silver (58,530) and France's Allan Morante finished the third (58,270).

Brazilian athletes Alice Gomez and Rayan Dutra won the AGF Trophy with the highest score demonstrating top performance.

Azerbaijani Minister of Youth and Sports Farid Gayibov and Deputy Minister Mariana Vasileva attended the awards ceremony for the men's and women's individual programme.

In the women's synchronised trampoline program, the Brazilian team took the first place (46,340), the Ukrainian pair was the second (46,010), and the US team was the third (44,500). In the men's synchronised trampoline program, the places were distributed among the teams as follows: Kazakhstan first (51,940), Germany second (51,080), and Portugal third (50,730).

Home arena

Azerbaijani gymnast Seljan Maqsudova demonstrated successful performance in the home arena again.

Last year, she won a silver medal of the World Cup and became the first woman in the history of Azerbaijani trampoline gymnastics to win a medal in the individual programme.

Maqsudova's current performance pleased the national team's head coach Vladimir Shulik again: "The World Cup in Trampoline Gymnastics was the first competition of the year. Therefore, preparations have been rather difficult. Seljan was nervous even though she was in optimal form. Performing in front of fans in Baku is always a responsibility. I am happy with her performance, as she did her movements very accurately. That is why she performed only once at this stage. There was no need for a second performance. We must always be careful in the finals. Sometimes a very strong athlete can miss a medal for a minor mistake. But Seljan performed well. A bronze medal is an excellent result. We should not forget that we were challenged by very strong teams from Brazil, US and France at the World Cup.”

Vladimir Shulik said that the main goal for 2023 was to get a licence for the summer Olympic Games in Paris: "Competing at the Olympic Games is every athlete's dream. The fight for licences begins this year. I think Seljan Maqsudova's chances of qualifying for Paris are high. We just need to prepare according to plan. We have made her training programme a bit more complicated. As the competition intensifies, one has to be prepared to fight hard. The main tournament of the year will be the World Cup, as it will be a platform to win access licences to the Paris Olympic Games. Seljan's current level is good, but it will get better.”

Mission Paris 2024

Seljan Maqsudova also considers her bronze medal received at the World Cup a good result. In her interview with Region Plus, she “blamed” the new performance programme for her bronze medal (compared to silver in 2022). "I am very happy that I could show a good result with my new programme. I became the third at the world cup. Well, last year I was the second actually. But my current result is not bad either. The most important thing is that I am one of the medalists. Repeating last year's achievement could hamper my performance of the new programme. That is why I was very nervous. After discussions with my coach, we made my performance a little bit more difficult. The competition was tough. If you want to win a medal, you have to perform more complicated moves. I did well in the classification, doing triple somersaults twice. That's why I didn't need a second try. And I showed a decent performance in the finals. I consider my bronze medal a good result. I thank my fans who supported us during the competition, the Azerbaijan Gymnastics Federation and the coaches for the conditions created for our training.”

In the future, Seljan is planning to qualify for the Paris Summer Olympics 2024: "My goal this year is to be among the medallists in the upcoming World Cup as well as in the world championship slated for the end of the year. There is a chance to win a licence for the Paris Olympic Games at the world championship".