USA Aerobic Gymnast Wins Silver Medal at World Championship
For the first time in the history of the sport of Aerobic Gymnastics, an athlete from the USA has won a medal at the World Aerobic Championships recently held in Cancun, Mexico. Demonstrating incredible flexibility, excellent showmanship and beautiful fluidity, Nicole Kaloyanov, 14 years old, who also trains and competes as a Rhythmic Gymnast for the United States, finished in 3rd position after the preliminaries with a score of 18.850. Excited by the possibility of being the first athlete from the USA at the World Aerobic Gymnastics to win a medal at the event sponsored by the Federation Internationale Gymnastique, Kaloyanov, who resides in Virginia, entered the finals feeling strong and confident. She improved her score to a total of 19.20, wowed the crowd with excellent execution and a confident performance and captured the Silver Medal for the USA.
Mariaa Tereshina of Russia won the gold medal with a score of 19.25. Winning the bronze medal with a score of 19.15 was Daria Tokhonova, also of Russia.
Nearly 600 gymnasts from 42 countries on six continents participated at the 2014 World Aerobic Gymnastics Championships and World Age Group competitions, set for June 23-29 in Cancun (MEX). Russia and Mexico, two nations with especially strong Aerobic traditions, sent the maximum number of athletes to compete in every event at the World Championships, maximizing their medal-earning potential. Spain, Hungary and South Korea also entered an individual or group of gymnasts in every event. France, among the strongest Aerobic nations on the World Cup circuit, has registered to send gymnasts in everything but Aerobic Dance.
From its inception in the early ’80′s, sportaerobics, as it is also commonly called, captured attention and earned the respect of athletes who were drawn to it by the challenge and excitement of its high-performance standard. Sportaerobics was created as a showcase for athletes of all ages to demonstrate excellence in the fitness components of muscular strength and endurance, cardio vascular fitness, flexibility and artistic performance skills. Today, it is quite common to refer to sportaerobics as “extreme aerobics” and to talk about its future as an Olympic sport.
In 1983 at the beginning of the aerobics and fitness movement, Sport Fitness International (SFI) founded by Los Angeles sport marketers Howard and Karen Schwartz took aerobics from a fitness activity and created the competitive discipline called competitive aerobics. Sportaerobics, as it is known today was the way for students and instructors alike to test their abilities in head to head athletic competition. Shortly after the development of the rules and guidelines by Sport Fitness International, the first National Aerobic Championship (NAC) was held in the USA in 1984. From 1986 Sportaerobics witnessed a vast and rapid development as countries around the world joined the USA and adopted the rules and judging criteria created for the NAC. In 1989 the non profit United States Competitive Aerobics Federation, USCAF was founded as the governing body for sportaerobics in the USA and the Association of National Aerobic Championships Worldwide (ANAC) its governing body worldwide.
