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French men's gymnastics team miss Paris Olympics berth / Photo: Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD - AFP
French men's gymnastics team miss Paris Olympics berth
The French men's gymnastics team on Sunday missed out on a berth at the 2024 Paris Olympics, after finishing 19th in qualifying at the world championships in Antwerp.
France had to finish in the top 12 in the world to qualify the team and at the same time ensure a quota of five individual places for their home Olympics.
But they finished far from the objective set after a disappointing competition.
Benjamin Osberger, Lucas Desanges, Jim Zona, Kevin Carvalho and Leo Saladino started with the rings and finished with the pommel horse, with little room for error.
"We knew we had to achieve something almost perfect to qualify," said Zona.
"We are not up to the task, we have to accept it,” added Benjamin Osberger.
"There's not much to say. We're missing out, especially on the last apparatus. It didn't work today. We'll have to bounce back."
After a decent start, they made a series of errors on the parallel bars before collectively collapsing on the pommel horse.
France also failed to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
However they have a chance of three individual Olympic quotas during the World Cup stages or the European Championships next spring, but qualification by this route promises to be very complicated.
"We're not in the best shape but obviously, we are going to play all the cards that remain to us," said French team coach Kévinn Rabaud.
At the end of qualifications, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands and Ukraine sealed their Olympic team tickets and joined China, Great Britain and Japan who were already qualified.
D.Fraser--SMC
