Irina Karavaeva (RUS) took the gold medal at the first Olympic trampoline competition Friday evening. Oxana Tsyhuleva (UKR) won the silver and Karen Cockburn (CAN) won the bronze.

 

American Jennifer Parilla (Lake Forrest, Calif.) failed to advance to the finals. Eight gymnasts advanced to the finals – Parilla finished the preliminary round in ninth place.

Each of the 12 gymnasts competed a compulsory and optional routine. The top eight gymnasts performed a single optional routine. Scores were not carried over.
American George Nissen, 86, the inventor of the trampoline, was on hand to watch the historic competition.

QUOTES

Jennifer Parilla: On performing before a large crowd:
“This was beautiful, gorgeous. It reminds me of Opening Ceremony..I was in awe. It was wonderful having my whole family here, the man who invented the trampoline, George Nissen here and Judy Wills Cline, the first world champion… I had them all over there when I was warming up so that was nice.”

What do you think about the future of your sport:
“I think the crowd was loving it… I think it’s definitely going to become more popular, having this coverage at the Olympics for the first time… I think the sport is growing, no matter what I did here. It’s going to go down in history… I think it’s going to have a wonderful future no matter what.
“I wish I could be doing one more routine right now, but I had so much fun doing everything just to get there.”

What happened on the optional routine?
“Gosh, it happened so fast…it started off pretty good and by the 4th skill, which is a new skill for me that I put in for more difficulty, I didn’t make it all the way around, so my next skill out of it was a lot lower, then it just stayed low till the end and I couldn’t get it back up.
“I am 19 and the youngest trampolinist here… we’ve got a lot of world champions here with more experience, but I will be back in 2004 and I will be more in my prime then… I will be around for a while.”