Elisabeth Seitz was beaming as she entered the mixed zone following the all-around competition in which she won the bronze medal. A Stuttgart local, like her teammate Kim Bui, she had an enormous amount of support from the audience throughout the competition, who were delighted to see her finish on the podium. The 25-year-old had been nervous before the competition due to some new upgrades to her vault and floor exercises, but everything went just as planned.
“I’m extremely happy about my competition. I was nervous because of vault. After six years, I did my Yurchenko double. After my vault, I saw it on the screen and I was surprised, because it looked like I’d never done any other kind of vault, but it’s not like that!”
Seitz explained that she had been training the double-twisting Yurchenko for some time, but had experienced a number of setbacks and only started seriously working on it towards the end of last year.
“The whole season, I tried it again and again but I had some injuries on my feet and on my back, so I always had to stop and now after the World Championships, I started training it again, so since November, I would say I’ve been doing it again.”
Seitz also talked us through her other events, including floor, where her new double Arabian skill presented the challenge of a blind landing.
I think the bars (routine) was also good. I can do it a little better, but I’m happy with my routine and the score was also good. Beam is not my best event. I wanted to stay on the beam, that was my goal and it was not perfect, but it was good. On floor, I also had the new skill, which was the double Arabian. At the time when we started on floor, I was again very nervous because of the double Arabian. It’s just that I see the landing very late, but that’s normal when you do forward tumbling.
She also admitted that she had not expected to win a medal because she felt that the calibre of the other competitors was extremely high.
I thought before the competition that being on the podium was really impossible because there were so many Olympians, world champions, whatever!”
Seitz also confirmed that becoming a strong all-around gymnast was a top priority for her, given the format of the next Olympic Games in Tokyo, where four-person teams mean that gymnasts generally need to be capable of competing on all the apparatus.
“That’s what we need for the Olympic games again, for the team, so yeah, it works!”
The European Gymnastics Blog 