Gymnastics: Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos, European Champion for the 4th time!
Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos offers France its first European crown on the balance beam and claims her 4th European title.
Successful gamble for Mélanie De Jesus Dos Santos at the European Championships, only 3 months before the Tokyo Games!
Mélanie De Jesus Dos Santos, sponsored by Banque BCP within the framework of the Performance Pact, took part in the European Gymnastics Championships in Basel (April 21-25, 2021) and gave a thrilling foretaste of her future performance in Tokyo.
On entering the 2021 European Championships, Mélanie set herself the challenge of performing on two different sets of apparatus: the balance beam and the uneven bars. Despite getting off to a slow start, finishing 26th in the final ranking on the uneven bars, Mélanie successfully bounced back and won the gold medal on the balance beam.
The young 21-year-old athlete managed to distance herself from her main opponents by adopting a spectacular new dismount, adding an extra twist to her double tuck back somersault (a degree of difficulty greater than the attempts of the other competitors). This enabled her to edge out the reigning Olympic champion Sanne Wevers with a score of 13.900 points vs. 13.866 for the Dutchwoman.
Melanie has now won four European titles in the space of three years (floor in 2018, all-around and floor in 2019). She is currently the most successful Frenchwoman in terms of medals won in the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
We are eagerly awaiting the artistic gymnastics events this summer from July 24 to August 3 when the four-time European champion will be seeking a place on the podium for her first Olympic Games!
Photo Credit: Thomas Schreyer