DES MOINES, Iowa — The 2020 Summer Olympics are just a year away and the qualifying tournaments are starting to begin. One of those tournaments is being held here in Des Moines in a little over a week!
Sixteen-hundred athletes will be competing inside Wells Fargo Arena July 2nd through the 6th for the USA Gymnastics Championships.
One of those is trampoline gymnast Nicole Ahsinger from Louisiana.
The 21-year-old gymnast said, “I think I just like jumping in the air, the feeling of like myself being on a rollercoaster and being 25 to 30 feet in the air, I think it’s just incredible.”
Ahsinger said the best thing about the USA Gymnastics Championships is that athletes compete in three disciplines of competition. There are acrobatic, rhythmic, and trampoline gymnastics in this competition, unlike the Olympics where there are just trampoline and rhythmic gymnastics.
“So they’ll get to see the acro which is people holding people up, and doing cool skills, and they’ll also be seeing tumbling, like the raw floor, that’s pretty cool, and then they’ll also be seeing double mini and that’s where you run down a small track and jump onto a small trampoline and then do a trick off,” Ahsinger said.
Ahsinger started gymnastics when she was just three-years-old and was immediately drawn to the feeling of flying and then falling.
“It’s kind of like when you jump in the air and when you’re in the air everything stops for a second and when you’re falling down your stomach kind of drops but it’s like a … it’s not a nerve-racking feeling it’s an excitement feeling,” Ahsinger said.
You can purchase tickets for the championships at hyveetix.com.
