Olympic all-around
bronze medalist Benoit
Caranobe, shown here
doing a Yamawaki,
placed fifth.
both bars and beam. She redeemed herself
with an excellent floor routine that featured a
stuck double layout, a 11⁄2 twist to a double
tuck, and the almost compulsory double pike
final pass. She was one of the few gymnasts
for whom the musical accompaniment wasn’t
just background noise.
Tsurumi vaulted a nice but low-valued full-twisting layout Yurchenko, and fell from bars
twice. But the Olympic beam finalist came
back strong on beam and especially floor,
where her elegance and grace were obvious.
Youna Dufournet (France), in third place
after uneven bars, took herself out of the running with a disastrous three-fall beam outing.
(See profile on Dufournet on p. 42.) Brittany
Rogers (Canada) and Jessica Lopez (
Venezuela) also had multiple falls on that apparatus to finish at the bottom of the rankings.
Fabian Hambüchen, who
had to withdraw from this
meet in 2008 because of
illness, won high bar and
placed second or third on
the other five events to
claim his first American
Cup all-around title.
MEN’S COMPETITION
FABIAN Hambüchen, 21, was certainly seeking a fresh start this year. A
sudden illness forced him to withdraw
from the 2008 American Cup on the day of
the meet, and later in the year, he struggled in
every phase of the Beijing Olympics. So Hambüchen was more than ready to prove himself
in 2009.
David Sender also had some personal issues
to erase. After winning the 2008 U.S. cham-
OPP. TOP: U.S. national champion David Sender
placed second all-around and won pommel horse,
rings and vault.
OPP. BOTTOM (l-r): Joey Hagerty, Yuri Ryazanov
and Koji Uematsu placed third, sixth and fourth,
respectively. Hagerty won floor exercise, and
Uematsu won parallel bars.
