Dominika Ponizilova, the 15-year-old who trains at Prostejov in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic, nearly swept her country’s most recent test meet that will help choose the junior team heading to the European Youth Olympic Festival this summer, winning gold medals on every event but beam.

With a score of 49.750, a really strong number for the Czech junior program, Ponizilova showed her best work of the meet on vault and floor while showing improvements on her other two events, only just missing out on the beam gold due to some mistakes there. As the frontrunner to make the Czech EYOF team, Ponizilova has a strong shot at a couple of individual finals in Györ, and showed here that she’s more than ready to take on the first major international competition of her career.

Behind Ponizilova, there are some gymnasts who are strong on occasion, but choosing the other two who will make the EYOF team won’t be an easy task. At the test meet in Brno, nearly every gymnast earned a top-three event score and the four gymnasts behind Ponizilova all finished within a point of one another, showing that while this program doesn’t have the strongest competitors, they at least have a good number of gymnasts who can all accomplish roughly the same scores.

Barbora Travnickova won the silver medal in the all-around with a 46.400 and went on to win the beam title with a 12.7 while also taking home the bronze on bars for a simple but steady set. The bronze medal went to Sabina Halova with a 45.950, while Halova also won the beam silver on top of bronze medals on vault and floor.

Rounding out the field were Jasmina Hnilicova in fourth with a 45.400 while also taking the silver on vault, Eliska Firtova in fifth with a 45.300 while winning the silver medals on bars and floor with a 12.0 on the latter, and Natalie Klakova in sixth with a 42.150.

The gymnast missing from this meet, Kristyna Brabcova, will definitely factor into the team selection for EYOF as well. The 15-year-old was one of the top juniors in the country last year, making the all-around final at Euros, and though an injury has kept her out for the past few months, if she returns at a good strength, she’ll have the potential to match Ponizilova in the all-around while standing out on bars and beam, the opposite of Ponizilova’s top events, making for great balance in the team competition. These two could probably get the job done on their own in the team competition, and the last spot will likely come down to how things go at Czech nationals in June.

Full results from the control meet can be found here.

Article by Lauren Hopkins