World Cup Champion Amanda Lentz of the U.S. and World Champions Elena Bloujina and Levon Petrosyan from Russia Expected To Compete
Indianapolis – Tumblers from 10 nations will compete at the Tumbling World Cup in St. Louis, July 29, 2000 at The Family Arena. The Tumbling World Cup is the last qualifying competition for the World Cup Final scheduled for Dessau, Germany, December 16, 2000. Other qualifying events for the 1999/2000 series were in Germany, Russia and Canada. The event is sanctioned by the International Gymnastic Federation.
Front-runners are Russians Elena Bloujina and Levon Petrosyan, current World Champions. Amanda Lentz (New Orleans, Louisiana) won the 1998 World Cup Final in Portugal. Lentz and teammate Alisha Robinson (Kansas City, Missouri) will represent the USA in the women’s division. Former World Champion Chrystel Robert of France will also compete in the women’s division.
In addition to Petrosyan, the men’s division includes Robert Small of Great Britain, bronze medalist at the 1999 World Championships. Randy Direen (Colorado Springs, Colorado), John Collier (Cincinnati, Ohio) and New Orleans tumblers Frankie Hartman and Chris Helton will represent the USA.
The competition will take place at the Family Arena. Countries entered in the competition are Armenia, Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Canada, France, Great Britain, Russia, Sri Lanka and USA.
Tumblers will perform an 8-skill straight pass and an 8-skill twisting pass in the preliminary round. Scores start from 0.0 for the final round, where competitors perform an 8-skill voluntary pass.
List of Invited Participants
NOTE: Subject to change. Number in parenthesis indicates the athlete’s ranking at the 1999 World Championships.
| COUNTRY | MEN | WOMEN |
| ARM | Artashes Grigoryan | Sirarpi Sahakyan |
| Roman Kharalyan | Sofya Melkonyan | |
| Gogik Yengibaryan | Armine Grigoryan | |
| ARG | Cristian Zabala | |
| AUS | Mark McLauchlan | |
| BLR | Natalia Ziukina (9) | |
| CAN | Ryan Lyons | |
| Chris Johnston | ||
| Dan Demers-Lajoie | ||
| Matt Dial | ||
| FRA | Alexandre Dechanet (6) | Melanie Avisse (3) |
| Nicolas Divry | Mariama N’Dour | |
| Nicolas Fournials | Chrystel Robert (2) | |
| Christopher Gigou | ||
| GBR | Robert Small (3) | Kathryn Peberdy (5) |
| RUS | Levon Petrosyan (1) | Elena Bloujina (1) |
| Andrei Akinchin | Natalie Rakhmanova | |
| USA | Randy Direen | Amanda Lentz (4) |
| Frankie Hartman | Alisha Robinson | |
| Chris Helton | ||
| John Collier |