VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam’s best female gymnast, Phan Thi Ha Thanh scored the highest point ever in the women’s single vault event and got a ticket to the finals at the World Championships in Antwerp (Belgium) tomorrow night, October 5.

Phan Thi Ha Thanh (second from left) at the ongoing World Gymnastics Champions in Belgium.

The women’s single vault content grouped up almost top athletes in the world today such as McKayla Maroney, Simone Biles and Kyla Ross (USA), Aliya Mustafina (Russia), Oksana Chusovitina (Uzbekistan), Larisa Iordache (Romania) ... so the competition was very fierce.

According to preliminary estimates, to enter the finale, Ha Thanh must score over 14 points. At the first jump, Ha Thanh scored a very high p9oint of 14.866 (difficulty level 5.8 and technical point of 9.066). However, even at this level, Ha Thanh only ranked 8th in comparison with other competitors.

In the second time, Ha Thanh and her coach decided to raise the difficult level to 6.2. With this level of difficulty, it is highly possible that Thanh would fail in the test so the Vietnam team members were very worried.

However, Ha Thanh overcame the pressure and successfully completed the jump and earned 8,866 points. Plus the point for the difficult level, Ha Thanh scored 15,066 point, the highest ever in her life.

The average point for the two jumps is 14,966 points. Ha Thanh ranked fourth after McKayla Maroney, Simone Biles (USA) and Hong Un Jong (North Korea). Ha Thanh became the only athlete of Vietnam entered the world finals in the women’s vault content.

The record score of Ha Thanh for this content is 14,825 when she won a gold medal at the 2013 World Cup in Doha (Qatar). In the finals at the 2011 World Championships, Ha Thanh won a bronze medal with a score of 14,666. Therefore, if she can repeat the two above jumps in the finals on October 5, it is highly likely that Ha Thanh will win a second medal at the World Championships.

Nguyen Nam