May 07, 2021 - 11:50 AM
OTTAWA - Gymnastics Canada will not send a team to a last-chance Tokyo Olympic qualifier because of COVID-19 concerns.
The organization announced Friday it will not send athletes to the 2021 Senior Pan American Championships in Rio de Janeiro from June 4-13.
The event was Canadaâs last chance to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in menâs artistic, womenâs artistic and rhythmic gymnastics.
Canada had the opportunity to qualify one more athlete in menâs and womenâs artistic, respectively, and one individual and one group in rhythmic gymnastics at the competition.
The event also is a qualifier for trampoline, but there will be another qualification event in that discipline in Italy at a World Cup.
Thursday, 6 May 2021
The unprofessional Executive Board of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has been severely criticised by China for putting athletes’ health at risk and forcing National Federations to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars unnecessarily.
Inexplicable delays in announcing a new qualifying system for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games compelled athletes to travel to events they did not need to compete in, and increased the risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus, said Zhou Jinqiang, President of the Chinese Weightlifting Association.
Zhou told
insidethegames that the IWF was not athlete-centred and that the sport’s leaders were acting in their own interests to such an extent that weightlifting is facing a big risk of being expelled from the Olympic Games.
Much has been said about the disadvantage that Pan America has compared to Europe or Asia with respect to its circuit of competitions, since in the Pan-American region the number of G-ranked events is lower than the continental unions mentioned before.
We spoke with the Secretary General of the WTPA, Rick Shin, an important businessman, and great organizer of Taekwondo events on the West Coast of the United States and he was forceful in assuring that three and even four circuits for tours could be organized in Pan America.
“If we put together four events in South America with one-week separation between each one of them, the teams could move from one country to another in the same geographical area and in this way many athletes who do not have the possibility of traveling to the United States, Canada or Europe, could accumulate up to 40 points moving, for example in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay”, Shin expressed very analytical.
The rescheduled 2020 Pan American Championships saw record after record fall.
Last updated on April 26th, 2021
The rescheduled Pan American Championships in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, have come to a close. Over the course of the event,
15 Pan American records were broken. Team USA had an exceptional showing, raking in 40 medals, including 15 gold. Additionally, five different Team USA weightlifters set new American and/or Pan American records, including Cecily Kyle, Jourdan Delacruz, Mattie Rogers, CJ Cummings, and Taylor Turner Wilkins.
Colombia also had a stellar performance, winning the most medals of any country they walked away with 43 medals, 22 of which were gold. Lesman Paredes set three new Pan American records in the 102-kilogram class. Brayan Rodallegas scored a Pan American snatch record at 81-kilograms. Miguel Suárez hit a new Pan American clean & jerk record at 55-kilograms. In total, 11 different countries scored at least one medal.
World records for Nurudinov and Yang Zhe at Asian Weightlifting Championships Saturday, 24 April 2021
Two athletes set world records and a young Iranian had a memorable victory on the penultimate day of the Asian Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent, but none of the three is likely to be at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games this year.
Two are ineligible and the third, China’s Yang Zhe, is not one of the strongest gold medal chances in the team and is unlikely to be selected.
Yang broke the 109 kilograms snatch world record with 200kg, and could then only watch as Uzbekistan’s most popular weightlifter, Ruslan Nurudinov, and his young teammate Akbar Djuraev left him behind in the clean and jerk.