© John Cheng
MOSCOW, May 13, 2011 – 2010 World floor exercise finalist Steven Legendre of Flower Mound, Texas, advanced to the floor finals at the International Gymnastics Federation’s World Cup in Moscow, Russia, on May 14, 2011. The top four in the preliminary round, which was held today, qualified for the event finals.
Legendre, who trains with the University of Oklahoma and is a member of Team Hilton HHonors, was second at 15.500 in the floor prelims, which put him on the heels of Greece’s Eleftherios Kosmidis who posted a 15.700. The other two floor finalists are Thomas Bouhail of France, who was third with a 15.200, and the Netherlands’ Jeffrey Wammes, who was fourth at 15.100.
Danell Leyva of Miami, who trains at Universal Gymnastics and is a member of Team Hilton HHonors, competed in the horizontal bar preliminaries but finished in eighth place. The Netherlands’ Epke Zonderland earned the event’s highest prelim score at 15.500. Leyva, who earned a silver medal just behind Zonderland at the recent World Cup in Paris, scored a 14.450.
The World Cup features individual competition in all artistic events, both men and women. The preliminaries featured 12 athletes competing on each apparatus, with the top four finishers advancing to the finals. The final round begins Saturday, May 14 at 1 p.m. local time. This is the fourth World Cup event of the FIG series. Invitations to the World Cup were based on performances at the 2010 World Championships.