Loris Frasca

The first Top 12 event for the men in 2020 was held over the weekend with eight teams fighting it out in four matches across France.

Antibes had the most decisive victory here, winning with 30 points to Bourges’ 18, winning two of the four duels on high bar, three of the four duels on vault, and all of the duels on pommel horse.

The team’s top scores came from star Loris Frasca, who qualified to the Olympic Games in Stuttgart last year, and though the rest of the scores weren’t super high overall, Antibes’ strategy was nearly flawless, especially on pommels, where each Antibes gymnast seemed to be perfectly in position to outscore his Bourges rival.

Sotteville les Rouen earned 28 points to defeat Franconville, thanks to particularly strong work from Lucas Desanges and Hallel Metidji on both vault and high bar, while all four pommels competitors were able to outdo the Franconville team, led by an especially strong 13.000 from Metidji, who had a very clean routine.

Desanges also gets bonus points in my book for defeating Russia’s Ivan Stretovich, who competed as a guest for Franconville, on this event, with a 12.800 for a simpler but tidy routine compared to Stretovich’s 12.300 with some mistakes. Stretovich was the top scorer of the competition on vault with a 14.300, however, and he also won his high bar duel with a 12.800, earning 7 of the team’s 20 points in total.

Noisy le Grand also defeated Montceau les Mines with a 28-20 total, winning all four vault duels as well as two of the pommels and high bar duels. The team’s vault scores were excellent, including a 14.350 from Benjamin Thiriot and a 14.450 from Hamza Hossaini, while Lorenzo Pambianchi posted the team’s top pommels score with a 12.000, and both Hossani and Alexis Blin posted 12.750s on high bar.

Notable for Montceau les Mines was Brandon Prost, whose 12.200 on pommels defeated Pambianchi’s score to win the duel there, and Prost also had a strong win on high bar, with a 12.350 to take down Pambianchi, while Bastien Eloy put up a 12.500 on this event with a massive 8.7 execution score to get another three points for his team.

The closest match was between Monaco and Oyonnax, with the two teams tied after the competition on vault, though Monaco was able to push into the lead on pommels and the team managed to hold this lead until the end, winning with 26 points to Oyonnax’s 22.

On vault, Monaco got vault wins from Julien Gobaux with a 13.950 and from Kevin Crovetto with a 13.400, though a fall from guest Oleg Verniaiev of Ukraine gave Oyonnax the opportunity for Vincent Millet to win this particular duel despite coming in with a vault difficulty 1.2 points lower than Verniaiev’s. This was obviously a major win for Millet, while Oyonnax also got a vault win from guest Tomas Kuzmickas of Lithuania, who posted a 13.400.

Monaco won three of the four duels on pommels, thanks to an 11.800 from Julien Gobaux, a 12.850 from Lilian Piotte, and a 13.750 from Oleg Verniaiev, while Kuzmickas picked up another win for Oyonnax with a 12.800 here. Oyonnax actually got close to a comeback on high bar, with a third win for Kuzmickas, who earned a 13.300, and then a surprise win from Jean Pierre Bruno, whose 12.050 edged out Verniaiev by just a tenth, though Monaco also had two wins here to stay ahead of the game thanks to Gobaux and Lilian Piotte.

Full results from all four matches are available here. Top 12 will return for its final regular series of matches of the season on February 8, and semi-finals for postseason begin at the end of February.

Article by Lauren Hopkins