With Olympic hopefuls Noemi Makra out with the flu and Zsofia Kovacs limited only to bars due to a sore thigh muscle, the 21-year-old Luca Diveky swooped in to take the Hungarian national all-around title with a 51.7 in Budapest today.

Diveky had a balanced performance across the four events, looking especially strong on vault and floor, to take the title by nearly two points over silver medalist Boglarka Devai. Devai’s best event was vault, where her FTY scored well enough to boost her to a 49.8 all-around, though she struggled on the remainder of her routines and couldn’t challenge for the win. In third place was the Olympian Dorina Böczögö with a 47.7 after a disastrous performance on bars. Böczögö fell twice on the same element and then sat her double front dismount, though she recovered well enough to have decent performances on beam and floor.

“I’m very happy I won the all-around title,” Diveky said following her performance. “I’ve been working at it since I was 16, but this is the first time I’ve won. My favorite events are vault and floor. Floor is simply a pleasure for me, and I love showing that to an audience. I have fewer acrobatic elements, and I find it important to be in sync with the music, which speaks for me. It’s kind of a visual gymnastics, and I try to win the audience over.”

The women’s head coach Imre Draskoczy was proud of Diveky, who will likely be named to the European Championships team alongside Makra, Kovacs, Devai, and Böczögö. Otherwise, however, he was disappointed with how the senior women performed. “I expected it to be more of a test for Euros for the top girls,” he said after a somber meeting with the team. “Frankly, I am not satisfied.”

In the junior field, Noemi Jakab won with a 50.7 followed by Dora Halasz with a 46.7 and Boglarka Tombol with a 45.2. There were actually other juniors there with stronger finishes, but for some reason they were not included in the overall ranking, which is interesting, as some – like Dorka Szujo – are expected to lead the juniors in Bern next month.

The Hungarians continue with vault and bars finals tomorrow and beam and floor finals on Sunday. Full results are not yet available, but we will post them as we get them.

Article by Lauren Hopkins