Nina Derwael (23) took action today in Baku in the qualifications of the beam exercise. She performed well through her exercise and received a score of 13.433 (starting value 5.1 plus 8.333 for the execution). With this she qualified for the final with eight. Five of those eight finalists are already certain of Paris and do not score any points for the Olympic ranking. This means that our compatriot is assured of one of the two Olympic tickets that can be earned on the beam.
“I am especially very relieved,” Derwael admitted to Sporza. “I still had the World Cup in Doha, but I’m happy that I’m done with it now and that it doesn’t have to happen anymore at the last World Cup. For me at this moment it is just as great an achievement to be in Paris as to win the gold in Tokyo. I can now be very happy with my performance.”
That qualification had indeed turned out to be an ordeal. Ideally, Derwael would have qualified for Paris at the World Championships in Antwerp last year, but shoulder surgery threw a spanner in the works. De Truiense had to forfeit and without her the Belgian girls could not qualify as a team. This started an alternative route to qualify individually, and she has now been able to grasp one of those straws. She did this on the beam and not on her favorite parallel bars, because that discipline is still too taxing for her shoulder. But the qualification via the beam does mean that she can compete on all apparatus in Paris. So she can defend her Olympic title on the bars.
Had Derwael not injured herself last year, and had she already qualified in Antwerp, she could have used the whole of 2024 to work on a new bridge exercise. Her old routine, built around the Derwael-Fenton, her own element, is no longer good enough to play for the medals. On the one hand because the new competitors have made progress (keep an eye on the Algerian Kaylia Nemour!), and on the other hand because Derwael-Fenton no longer produces the top scores of the past due to a new interpretation. At the World Championships in Liverpool, the last major tournament in which Derwael participated at the end of 2022, she ‘only’ achieved bronze. Then it became very clear that an era had ended: an exercise around the Derwael-Fenton would no longer be possible, a Derwael 2.0 had to be created.
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Due to all the injuries and the detour in the Olympic qualification process, she was only able to work very little on this new exercise. She is now training on bars again, but she still has to be careful with the swing elements, which are the most stressful for her shoulder. “I get to kiss both hands with the people I have around me. My shoulder is doing very well. I now do almost everything again. We will now resume the final elements and start building.”
European Championships become preparation
Now that the ticket for Paris 2024 is secured, she can finally shift the focus from Olympic qualification to the actual preparation for Paris. She will skip the last World Cup in Doha to continue training in Ghent. The upcoming European Championship, from May 2 to 5 in Rimini, Italy, is also losing importance now that she has already been placed. She no longer has to perform all four apparatus there and if she does participate, it will be to try out a first version of her new parallel bars exercise in competition.
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Ideally, Derwael would also like to do all-round gymnastics in Paris, on all four apparatus. She likes to do that and she normally makes it to the final easily (all-round with the best 24). If she participates in everything in the Olympic qualifications, she will be eligible for three finals: bars, beam and all-around. Because Belgium cannot send a team to Paris, it certainly has a less stressful program than in Tokyo.
Chances of winning a medal are small
We have to be realistic about medal chances. New honors at the Games would be a huge stunt after all the physical and mental suffering that has happened to her since that gold medal in Tokyo. First she took a long break, during which she won the TV game ‘Dancing with the stars’. After that, her return to the sport was difficult. A knee injury kept her away from the European Championships in Munich in 2022 and due to a break with her then boyfriend Siemen Voet, her preparation for the World Cup in Liverpool was in the water. At that World Championships she only competed in two apparatus and took bronze on the parallel bars.
Shoulder injuries ruined all of 2023: she missed the European Championships in Antalya due to a subluxation (half dislocation) and the World Championships in Antwerp due to a dislocation (completely dislocated), followed by surgery. After that World Cup, Marjorie Heuls and Yves Kieffer, her coaches since childhood, were thrown out the door. Some time later, Ulla and Dieter Koch were appointed as interim successors. She was also hit hard in her private life when a malignant tumor was discovered in her mother. Her health is now going in the right direction.
“That changed my view of life,” she said a while ago about the disease. She took a different tack in her life. She moved out of her room at the top gym in Ghent and went to live in a loft in Ghent with her new boyfriend Thibault Dierickx. In terms of sport, she built her own team around her. “I needed a change in my mentality and in the way I work. I was selfish then, focused on what I needed and put together my own team.” Under Ulla Koch she feels treated like the adult she is now, and she can organize her own life and training as she sees it.
Met Ulla Koch. — © BELGIUM