Manrique Larduet took three golds at the Gymnastics World Cup in Portugal

June 18, 2018

Two gold medals and one silver medal marked the excellent finish put in by Cubans Manrique Larduet and Randy Lerú at the Guimaraes World Cup of artistic gymnastics in Portugal, a competition that marked their return to the top level after almost a year of absence.

Manrique, who had already won the title on the rings, dominated on Sunday the vault and parallel bars, while his teammate Lerú finished second on the high bar, which was won by Hungarian David Vecsernyes by just 0.50 tenths of a point difference.

"It's good to finish like this. This is more their level, not what happened in the qualifications when they faced the competition very tired from the trip," acknowledged coach Carlos Gil from the venue, who especially praised the scores received today.

The runner-up in the 2015 all-around dominated the vault with 14.675 points ahead of Guatemalan Jorge Vega (14.575), who will be one of the troublesome rivals in the very near Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla.

On the parallel bars, he climbed to the top of the podium after receiving 15.100 points and leaving far behind—by a large margin—Romanian Andrei Vasile Munteun (14.600) and Swiss Henji Mboyo (14.350).

To these golds, Cuba's best current gymnast added the day before the rings and sixth and seventh places in floor exercise and pommel horse, in that order.

The only apparatus that escaped his presence in the medal competition was the high bar, as he was unable to finish among the top eight on the second day.

"We are happy with what we have done here, even in some cases we lowered the complexity of the routines," confirmed Carlos, and announced that in the few days remaining before Barranquilla, he will focus on working on details detected now.

Source: Jit