A fantastic performance from Great Britain’s Christian Beecher and Katie Axten as they won the IAGC 12-19 Mixed Pairs Title scoring a huge 28.95 in their final routine finishing 0.80 ahead of their nearest rivals. The Spelthorne pair led the Qualifications just 0.05 ahead of the Russian pair of Anna Karpuninia and Alexey Bogomolov who slipped to 8th position in the Finals. A well deserved Title for Christian and Katie after an excellent Championships.

A special mention too for Great Britain’s Lee Colley and Sarah Cameron from Wakefield who were desperately unlucky to miss Finals after they finished in 3rd position in Qualifications with 2 superb routines from the new mixed pair. Two places in the top 3 in the World for GB in this group is a fantastic achievement and don’t miss the great photos of Lee and Sarah on this page.

A tie for 4th place in the Finals as the Judges awarded 27.650 to Olga Malysheva ( shown above) and Viktor Ossolodkov from Kazakhstan and Elizke Blofield and Alexander Yurievich Demianenko from South Africa.

Performing in front of their home crowd the Portuguese mixed pair Vitor Silva and Maria Ganito responded with a terrific Qualifying round advancing to the Finals in 7th place. Their spectacular combined routine produced cheers from their supporters as they finished in 6th place scoring 27.150.

Kevin Gautier and Antionine Bidaud from France qualified in 11th place, and finished in 7th in Finals with their final routine scoring 27.050.

The Russian Mixed Pair of Anna Karpunina and Alexy Bogomolov performed 2 fabulous routines in Qualifications to hit scores of 28.80 in Balance to equal the highest score for Christian Beecher and Katie Axten, and their tempo routine scored 28.40 with the Russians qualifying in 2nd place just 0.05 behind the British gymnasts.

Unfortunately their final routine resulted in a disappointing 8th place finish with the judges awarding 26.40 leaving the Russians over 2.5 points behind the leaders. Anna and Alexey must have been so disappointed after a sad end to an otherwise excellent performance from both gymnasts. 

Lee Colley and Sarah Cameron performed brilliantly in Qualifications to earn 28.30 in Balance and 28.20 in Tempo for a total of  56.500 to finish in 3rd position. Unfortunately the one group per country qualifying for Finals meant that Lee and Sarah could not compete in Finals as Christian and Katie had also qualified in 1st place.

Congratulations to Lee & Sarah on an excellent competition which is even more impressive as the Pair have only been together for less than a year.

AMAZING NEW 9 PAGE PHOTO GALLERY FROM THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL AGE GROUP ACROBATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS!

We are very proud to bring you a fantastic 9 page photo special from the International Acrobatics Age Group Championships PLUS 4 pages of amazing photos from the World Championships!

This features fantastic new photos from Isabel Silva who is a terrific sports photographer who filmed the IAGC and World Championships in her very first photo shoot for an Acrobatics Event! Don’t miss these fabulous 13 pages of photos as they include some of the best pictures from the Championships including all your favourite Sports Acrobats!

Isabel specializes in Ice Skating on her Web Site where she has some incredible photo galleries and she is also increasing her Sports Acrobatics coverage. Isabel is a regular visitor to Gymnastics Online and has kindly allowed me to use some of her fantastic photos here. All photos in this feature are copyright of Isabel Silva and must not be reproduced or copied without permission.

The photos capture all the excitement and drama in Coimbra and include 5 photos of nearly every Great Britain Team member at the IAGC plus all the medalist’s! Page 7 features the 12-19 Mixed Pairs and Gold Medals for Christian and Katie from Great Britain plus Silver for Poland! We also include some great photos of GB’s Lee Colley and Sarah Cameron who were very unlucky not to appear in the Finals after finishing in 3rd place in Qualifications. 

Full results from the Championships and links to every group of photos for the 11-16 and 12-19 Age Groups Championships are shown below.

Click here for links to the World Championships results and our 4 page photo special from Coimbra!

Please visit Isabel’s fantastic Site to see many more amazing photos from the International Age Group Championships and the World Acrobatics Championships! See her IAGC Photos here and World Acro Championships photos here!