In the qualification round, Tatiana Petrenya, Anna Gorchenok, Maria Lon and Polina Badygina were ranked fourth but, in the final, in which just three athletes from each squad competed, they scored an impressive 160,090 points, to claim silver, behind the Chinese, and ahead of the Russians.
In the men’s tournament, the Belarusian squad kept third place through until the finals, with 172,585 points, to win bronze.
The World Championships in Odense, Denmark, was a selective event for the 2016 Olympic Games for trampolinists in individual programmes, with the top eight men and women automatically receiving tickets to Rio de Janeiro (no more than two per country). Competition for tickets was high, with a record 136 men and 90 women competing this year. Those ranked between 9th and 16th will have the chance to receive tickets to Rio next April.
During pre-Olympic week, five more tickets will be given, while the remaining three places for men and women will be distributed by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Belarus was represented at the World Trampoline Championships by Tatiana Petrenya, Anna Gorchenok, Maria Lon and Polina Badygina, as well as Nikolay Kazak, Vladislav Goncharov, Oleg Ryabtsev and Artem Zhuk, while Dmitry Doroshuk, Edgard Vichis, Nikita Pavlenko and Artur Perfiliev comprised the national tumbling team.
By Igor Grishin