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| Photo is courtesy of UCLA |
With an Olympic gold medal already in hand from the team competition, incoming freshman Madison Kocian added an uneven bars silver medal to her collection on Sunday. Kocian scored 15.833 in the individual event finals, just narrowly missing gold, which went to Russia's Aliya Mustafina with a 15.900.
Mustafina had the most difficult routine in the competition with a 6.8 start value, and she added an execution score of 9.1. Kocian, who posted the top qualifying mark last week with a 15.866 and tied Mustafina for the top mark in team finals with a 15.933, directly followed and hit all of her elements, punctuating it with a stuck full-twisting double back dismount. Kocian earned the meet's highest execution mark with a 9.133, but her start value was one-tenth lower than Mustafina's at 6.7, which proved to be the difference.
Kocian's 2016 Olympic journey ends with team gold and individual silver. She hit all three of her uneven bars routines at the Olympics, averaging 15.877 and scoring over 15.8 on each routine.
Kocian will join the UCLA Gymnastics team in September as a freshman, along with 2012 Olympic gold medalist Kyla Ross. They will be joining a team in which half of the coaching staff are Olympians - 1992 Olympian Chris Waller and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber. Kocian, Ross and Wieber have four Olympic and 11 World Championship medals between them (Kocian – 1 Olympic gold, 3 World gold, 1 Olympic silver; Ross – 1 Olympic gold, 1 World gold, 3 World silver, 1 World bronze; Wieber – 1 Olympic gold, 2 World gold, 1 World bronze).
Season tickets for the 2017 UCLA Gymnastics season are on sale now at uclabruins.com/tickets.
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