A. Varna World Cup
This past weekend, the FIG hosted the first World Challenge Cup of the year in Varna, Bulgaria. The World Challenge Cups differ from the World Cup series that concluded in Cairo in April; however, they are similar in that athletes have the option to tally points over the series to win the series title.
The Penev brothers were the star of the floor exercise at their home challenge cup where Eddie and Kevin placed first and second respectively; Eddie also won the bronze on vault. Vietnam’s DANG Ngoc Xuan Thien posted the highest pommel horse score at any FIG event this year to date during qualifications; a struggle on the dismount in finals kept him from repeating his high score, yet he still came away with the pommel horse title.
Adem Asil (Turkey) won still rings with a downgraded dismount. Taiwan’s TSENG Wei-Sheng tallied a 14.183 to win vault edging out Norway’s Sebastian Sponevik. Tseng did so by performing the rarely seen Zimmerman vault (5.2). Ferhat Arican won Turkey’s second gold of the competition with a 14.300 on parallel bars and Rober Tvorogal (LTU) finished out the competition with a triple back on high bar to win over Marios Georgiou (CYP) and Adem Asil (TUR) .
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B. Troféu Brasil
Trophy Brasil, a national apparatus championships, took place this past weekend where Caio Souza won floor, still rings, parallel bars, and high bar as well as taking silver on pommel horse. Johnny Oshiro won pommel horse and Tomas Florencio won vault.
Floor
- SOUZA Caio 13.933
- OLIVA Juliano 13.233
- BONO Felipe 12.200
Pommel Horse
- OSHIRO Johnny 12.966
- SOUZA Caio 12.833
- SILVESTRE Pedro 12.766
Still Rings
- SOUZA Caio 13.933
- OLIVA Juliano 13.233
- BONO Felipe 12.200
Vault
- FLORENCIO Tomas 13.966
- CORREA Patrick 13.583
- SILVA Joao Matheus 13.350
Parallel Bars
- SOUZA Caio 13.833
- OSHIRO Johnny 13.333
- SOUZA Leonardo 12.633
High Bar
- SOUZA Caio 13.966
- CORREA Patrick 13.600
- BORGES Rogerio 13.200
C. GymACT National Championships
Arizona State University once again reigned supreme winning the 2025 GymACT National Championships over Minnesota and the Bay Area Bandits. This marks the third time that ASU has won the GymACT national Championships since its inception in 2021. Bay Area Bandits’ Toma Murakawa won the all-around with a 77.700.
Event Winners
Floor: Bradley Stround (Washington)/Will Howard (ASU) - 13.350
Pommel Horse: Zachary Litwin (ASH) - 13.200
Still Rings: Panteley Kolodii (BAB) - 13.500
Vault: Ben Letvin (Minnesota) - 14.200
Parallel Bars: Toma Murakawa (BAB) - 13.250
High Bar: William Pearce (BAB) - 13.650
Full results can be found here.
D. JD National Championships
In addition to the GymACT Championships, junior athletes from around the country gathered in Utah to compete at the Junior Development National Championships in levels 8, 9, and 10.
Top stars included all-around winners Sasha Bogonosiuk (JE10 - 19); Nathan Roman (JE10 - 18); Maksim Kan (JE10 - 17); and Hayden Brown (JE10 - 16).
The competition also served as the selector for junior national team members and the 2025 Junior Pan American Games Team.
Full Results can be found here.
E. Frederick Richard in China
Olympic medalist, Frederick Richard, is currently on an Asian tour to train with athletes from the Chinese and Japanese national teams. Richard has connections to the Chinese national team through his Michigan head coach, Xiao Yuan, who coached the Chinese National Team to win gold medals at the World and Olympic level; the U.S. National Team has a long-standing relationship with the Japanese national team and often have training in Funabashi.
According to this post, 2021 World AA Champion, Zhang Boheng, said this of Richard, “ He’s a young AAer and as an AAer myself, I feel like we’ve got a lot that we can talk and tell each other about. Training together like this is of great importance because it help to break thorugh the bottleneck of technical difficulty. Hopefully, maybe, we’d get the chance to trian together again at a U.S. MAG camp.”
F. Upcoming Competitions
May 15 - 18 - Koper World Challenge Cup
May 15 - 22 Chinese Gymnastics Championships
May 16 - 18: NHK Trophy (Final World Gymnastics Championships Trial for the Japanese Team)
May 24 - 25: Belgian Gymnastics Championships
May 26 - 30: Canadian Gymnastics Championships
May 26 - 31: European Gymnastics Championships
G. Podcasts
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