Trampoline great Emmanuel "Manu" Durand (FRA) provided AcrobaticSports with a technical analysis of certain aspects of the trampoline performances realized at the World Cup in Ghent.  We completed the analysis by adding a few elements.  Durand was the winner of the 1997 World Cup Final and was the World silver medalist at the 1996 World Championships.  In addition, he won multiple World Champion and European Champion titles in the synchro and team events.  He is the performer of what is still to this day the cleanest routine ever performed: a 29.50 pt in execution mark in his first routine at the 1996 World Championships.

Height and Amplitude

Durand noted that bronze medalist Lu Chunlong (CHN) gave the impression to jump very high, and was particularly clean over the first 5 moves of the routine he competed in the final.  Nevertheless, the time of his routine was below 19 seconds (18:9 seconds) in the final.  Thus, it was not that high, especially if you compare it to the usual height of trampolinists like Olympic Champion Yuri Nikitin (UKR) or Markus Kubicka (GER).

It seems to us that Lu lost some significant height in performing the last three back moves of his routine (full in full out lay, half in rudy out pike and miller lay) where his take offs were not vertical enough, thus causing backward traveling and loss of height.  He encountered similar take off issues on the half in rudy out pike and the miller lay in the preliminaries.  Lu appeared to us as the Chinese with the highest potential.  At only 17 currently, he would probably be at his peak at the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  In addition, a bronze medal for your first major international competition at the age of 17 is not too shabby. 

Durand also noted, in comparison to Lu's performance, that gold medalist Yasuhiro Ueyama (JPN) was timed at 18:6 seconds, and silver medalist Flavio Cannone (ITA)'s routine took 18:5 seconds.  

Based on the videos of the preliminaries, Durand came to the conclusion that only 2 trampolinists competed first routines (i.e., compulsories) that were timed at more than 20 seconds: Ye Shuai (CHN) and Ji Wallace (AUS).  Only 2 athletes competed second routines (i.e., optionals) that were timed at more than 19 seconds: Ye once again (despite his struggles in the routine) and Mickael Jala (FRA), who did not miss the final by much. 

Those performances are what Emmanuel Durand would call "high".  However, first routines timed at 20:5+ seconds and second routines timed at 19:5+ seconds are what Durand would call "very high".  In Durand's opinion, nobody performed very high routines, but Ye was not far from it. 

In the women's final, Durand's analysis showed that gold medalist Irina Karavaeva (RUS) jumps noticeably higher than her rivals.  Her routine was timed at 17:8 seconds, which was 1 second more than silver medalist Anna Dogonadze's 16:8 seconds.  Karen Cockburn's amplitude appeared in between with 17:3 seconds.  

Technical Tendency

Emmanuel Durand's first reaction's to the videos of the preliminaries was that the barani is making a comeback in the first routines (a.k.a., compulsories).  The rudolphs have almost disappeared in the first routines.  So did the fulls.  Now, the athletes perform many barani tucked or piked instead.

Average Difficulty

Emmanuel Durand usually assesses the overall difficulty level of a competition by looking at the average degree of difficulty of the top 50% athletes in the final standings.  In Ghent, the top 50% athletes represented 33 competitors in the men's.  The average degree of difficulty was 15.20 pts.  This difficulty appears to be the same as the average difficulty at the 2005 World Championships.

Based on Emmanuel Durand's analysis, it seems to us that a fair conclusion is that all the attempts to perform routines in excess of the World record or near the World record that were recently observed in non FIG sanctioned events did not translate in the difficulty of the routines performed, and more precisely completed, at the Ghent World Cup.  In our opinion, one of the explanations is the fact that none of the 4 Russians completed their optionals.  The Russian Federation raised the bar to 16.00 pts to be on the Russian team at the European Championships.  However, the Ghent World Cup appears as a growing pain in this process.  We also noted that Liu Qipeng (CHN), who used to compete a 16.50 pt routine last year, "simply" competed a 16.00 pt routine in Ghent.

Overall Impression of the Finals

Durand stated that the finals were very nice.  He was favorably surprised by the great performance by Flavio Cannone (ITA), who, in Durand's opinion could surprise many others at the European Championships in Metz, France, at the end of this month. 

Link to Emmanuel Durand's official website