Winners of Acro World Cup Series!

With wins in the 2017 FIG World Cup series in Acrobatic Gymnastics in their respective categories, Belgian Men’s Pair Kilian Goffaux and Robin Casse and Women’s Pair Noemie Lammertyn and Lore Vanden Berghe are setting the bar high as Antwerp gears up to host the next year’s World Championships.

Stellar seasons on the four-stop World Cup circuit saw the Belgian duos top the FIG World Cup rankings, which are determined by a system in which points are awarded based on gymnasts’s placements at different World Cup events (first place earns 30 points in the standings, second 25, and third 20.)

Casse, the younger brother of 2016 World Men’s Pair bronze medallist Vincent Casse, and Goffaux dominated competition on the World Cup circuit this year, grabbing titles in Maia (POR) and Puurs (BEL) and finishing with silver at last weekend’s season closer in Lisbon. Lammertyn and Vanden Burge clinched their win at the Puurs World Cup in April.

In their first year competing together, Portugal’s Carolina Dias and Joao Martins also racked up three wins to finish in front in the Mixed Pairs standings. The duo, fourth at this summer’s World Games in Poland, were honoured with the rest of the winners before their home crowd during a special ceremony last weekend in the Portuguese capital.

For Austria’s Florentina Gruber, Victoria Loidl and Melanie Trautenberger, tying with Russia’s Polina Galanova, Victoriia Kudriavtseva and Alina Petrova for first in the Women’s Group rankings in the first year the Austrian federation has sent gymnasts to World Cup competitions came as something of a shock. The trio's participation in three World Cup events helped them garner enough points to tie the Russians in the overall rankings.

"Our last World Cup meet for now worked out super, and we showed again that we belong there,” Gruber said. “Now we’re focusing on the European Championships" which begin October 13 in Rzeszow (POL).

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