Two-time European Uneven Bars champion Nina Derwael could make more history for Belgium with a gold medal at the World Championships in Doha, but individual success is in the back of her mind.
“The main objective is to do a great team performance and to really be there for my team,” the 18-year-old Derwael says.
This competition is all about team for the Belgian women, who have risen from obscurity over the past decade. In 2016, the Belgian women Gymnastics qualified a full team to the Olympics for the first time in 68 years.
It was a big leap for Belgium, which a decade earlier did not even enter a full women’s team at the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus, eliminating any chance of qualifying to the Olympic Games in Beijing. The team finished 15th in Rotterdam in 2010 and 16th in Tokyo in 2011.
French coach Marjorie Heuls and husband Yves Kieffer are the architects of the team, which they built from the ground up after arriving in Belgium in 2009.
“This is the first generation that we’ve taken from junior to senior,” Heuls says. “In four years, they didn’t have the opportunity to reach their very best level, so this is the result of six years of work that we can now show.”
Hard work is nothing new to the coaching couple, who guided two of France’s most successful gymnasts in history, Émilie LePennec, the 2004 Olympic champion on Uneven Bars, Isabelle Severino, who won a bronze medal on Bars at the 1996 Worlds and the European title on Floor Exercise in 2005.
The team qualified in third place at the European Championships, held in August in Glasgow. Despite the good chance of an unprecedented team medal, Belgium withdrew from the team final in Glasgow out of fear of aggravating nagging injuries that could prove costly in Doha, the first Olympic qualification event for the 2020 Olympic Games.
However, Belgium picked up a complete set of medals in the apparatus finals in Glasgow. Derwael won her second title on Uneven Bars and a silver medal on Balance Beam, and Axelle Klinckaert won the bronze on Floor Exercise. Maellyse Brassart also qualified to the final on Balance Beam. They are joined in Doha by Olympians Senna Deriks and Rune Hermans, who helped the team place 12th in Rio.
The team is targetting another top-12 finish in Doha, but their upward momentum means a top-eight finish in qualification is not out of the question. An appearance in the team final would be the icing on the cake for the tight-knit group, who train together at the Belgian national centre in Ghent.
“The atmosphere is really good because we are all friends,” Klinckaert says. “We’re living everything together, and that’s really great.”
The future looks bright for Belgium, which has more talents waiting in the wings.
“We also have four juniors turning senior in January who I hope will strengthen the team,” Heuls says.
The younger gymnasts are following in the footsteps of trailblazer Derwael, who made history with her bronze medal on Uneven Bars at the 2017 Worlds in Montreal (CAN), the first for a Belgian female gymnast.
“It was very special for me, especially at my first world championships, to go out there and show the exercise that I could do,” she says, “and then to win the bronze medal was unbelievable.”
Adds Derwael, “I’m hoping to do even better this year at worlds.”