London 2012 turnen epke zonderland biography

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Gymnastics Olympic Games. Unfortunately, mainly because of injuries in preparation for the Olympic Games , I had to focus more and more on the apparatus speciality. Although there were no successes for me at the Olympic Games in Beijing, I was seventh in the finals. With this experience I made a significant step forward as an athlete. The advantage of specializing is that I can now focus more on my favourite disciplines, the horizontal bar and parallel bars.

By doing so, my performance since has been more stable, resulting in a few highs, like the two silver medals at the World Championship London , the World Championship Rotterdam and the European title at the European Championship Berlin But my best sports moment by far, was at the Olympic Games in London by achieving gold. After that, my wax work was placed in Madame Tussauds.

What an honour! That gave us the opportunity to take part in the test event for the Olympic Games in April in Rio. At the Olympic Games in August , we became tenth, a wonderful result. I qualified for the horizontal bar finals, but I missed my second flight element as a result of which I ended up being seventh. In I started my medical training, which I combined with my gymnastics career.

London 2012 turnen epke zonderland biography

Obviously, I have encountered delays. So, after the Games in Rio, it was time to complete my education. I still had six months of internships planned in orthopaedics and sports medicine. In this period, I was mainly involved with my training. Since the spring of , I have been a physician and in that same year I started working at Sportgeneeskunde Friesland in Sportstad Heerenveen.

In the year before the Olympic Games in Rio, I encountered several health problems, and the World Championship in Montreal has shaped the continuation of my career. I was plagued by chronic sinusitis, which made me so tired, that I could not train enough. Luckily, the symptoms subsided in and I could resume my training schedule as desired.

This resulted in the silver medal at the World Championship in Montreal. Partly due to this success, I decided to continue my gymnastics career to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. In , I married my wonderful wife Linda Steen. We met in and she has been a key factor in my successes in my sports career. At the European Junior Championships in Ljubljana he was fourth in the all-around event and he won a silver medal on the horizontal bar.

In at the World Championships in Melbourne , Zonderland and Jeffrey Wammes were the first ever Dutch gymnasts in the history of the sport to qualify for the all-around final. After his success in he continued in by reaching the final of the horizontal bar competition during the European Championships in Volos , where he was 6th. In he competed in both the European and the World Championships.

At the European Championships in Amsterdam he finished sixth in the individual all-around IAA event, the highest ever position by a Dutch gymnast. Later, in September at the World Championships in Stuttgart Zonderland finished 4th on the horizontal bar, which earned him a qualification for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. At the Summer Olympics , Zonderland reached the high bar final in which he finished seventh.

In , he won the silver medal on high bar at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. At the World Championships in Rotterdam, he earned another silver medal on high bar. In he became European champion for the first time. At the Summer Olympics , Zonderland won an Olympic gold medal in the high bar with a personal best score of His routine included a triple combo of Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman, then the most difficult release combination.

At the World Championships in Antwerp , Zonderland became world champion for the first time. In , Zonderland won the championship title again on high bar at the European Championships in Sofia , Bulgaria. In April , Zonderland failed to defend the European title after falling off the high bar. In , Zonderland sprained his fingers again during training in June, just before the Summer Olympics.

On 16—17 September , Zonderland competed at the Paris Challenge Cup in France where he won gold in the high bar individual event, scoring He then competed at the World Championships in Montreal. In the high bar event final, he caught the bar with just one hand after a flight element, but managed to stay on with only his right hand to swing into a giant despite glaring leg separation, and successfully finished his routine.

He earned a silver medal, scoring On 9—12 August Zonderland competed at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow , Scotland , where he won the silver medal—thanks heavily to his top D-score of 6. At the World Championships in Doha , Qatar , Zonderland won gold on the high bar at the age of His routine included two double release combinations, a Cassina to Kovacs, followed by a Kolman-Gaylord 2.

He became the first man to win three high bar gold medals at the World Championships. Zonderland competed down under at the Melbourne World Cup in Melbourne , Australia , from 21 to 24 February He and Hidetaka Miyachi of Japan scored identical highest combined scores of However, after activating the tiebreak procedure, Zonderland was relegated to the silver medal because Miyachi's execution score number was higher than his own.

Also, between 10 and 14 April , at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships —an FIG championships held in Szczecin , Poland —Zonderland won his third European gold medal in the individual horizontal bar apparatus final. At the Summer Olympics in Tokyo , Japan , Zonderland did not qualify for the individual horizontal bar finals after ranking 23rd with a score of