Enslow maintains World ranking
Press release, 5th January. 2006
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| Avril Enslow, New Zealand’s top gymnastic judge maintained her expert status at the recent intercontinental judge’s course held in Japan prior to Christmas. The course was attended by 96 of the Worlds top judges and only 30 were selected for Expert status. Enslow has been at the highest level of judging since 1992 and has attended 3 Olympics so far. This recent success will probably mean a call up to Beijing. |
| “This course was the most difficult I have attended, the old rules were tossed out after what happened in the men’s competition in Athens and were rewritten in just 6 months” said Avril Enslow. “Normally the rules are altered slightly after each Olympics, but this time they started from scratch” |
| “At first I was not in favour of what they proposed, and actually petitioned against the change, I wanted to keep the 10 as it was, but I can see there is some good elements in what they have done. Bringing artistry back into the sport has to be good, and also giving rewards to those gymnasts that have good depth in their composition not just a few good tricks” |
| The Commonwealth Games in March will the first big international competition to use the new code of points, which came into use on January 1st and the world will be watching what happens. |
| Enslow will be attending as one of the Head Judges for the already sold out event. |
| It will be difficult for the fans and media alike to come to terms with the scoring. The gold medalist on vault this time will be scoring a 13.5 or 14. Gone are the 9.95 or 9.87, the ‘10’ has been retained in some part but only for the B panel score, the A panel will evaluate the difficulty and the bonuses and add their total to the B score to give a final mark which will be open ended. |
| Enslow was named as a recipient of the inaugural Prime Minister’s Officials Scholarships announced on 20th December and used her scholarship to attend the Japan course. |
