At the London Summer Olympics on 7 August 2012, horizontal bar gymnast Epke Zonderland won gold with a breathtaking routine featuring three aerial elements, the now world famous ‘Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman’ combo.
He’s back in training and — you guessed it — he’s added a fourth element, the Gaylord II, to his super combo. Zonderland talked about it on television very modestly as he has a long way to go to get it down pat. From what the news reports, it’s the Cassina and the Kolman that are the most difficult.
On 7 August Dutch horizontal bar gymnast Epke Zonderland from Heerenveen, Friesland won gold at the London Olympics for his highly difficult routine with a unique 7.9 start value. Basically, by nailing this stunning routine down, he knew he could take home the gold. Instead of doing something very good and hoping to be the best, he obsessively practiced something never seen before and took the risk of either wowing the crowd or messing it up. He’s the first Dutch male gymnast to win a medal at the Olympics as well as the first Dutch gymnast (male or female) to win an individual Olympic medal, according to Wikipedia.
This is one of the last times he performed his famous high flying routine before London. On Dutch television, his coach mentioned several times that Zonderland mucked up this routine quite often, but really wanted to perform it in London regardless. Here’s him nailing his routine down, with the now famous ‘Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman’ elements before the Olympics. The announcer says that the week before Zonderland was not able to do it, while at the end he says, “He’s ready for London”.
