Francis goes for Jamaica’s first medal at Pan Am

Gymnast Danusia Francis will hope to win Jamaica’s first medal at the 2019 Pan American Games when she competes in the women’s individual all round final at the Villa El Salvador Sports Centre in Lima, Peru, today at 1 p.m.

The 25-year-old Francis qualified for today’s final with a combined average score of 51.975 ranking her eighth out of the 24 finalists with solid performances in the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise events during qualification on Saturday. Francis’s performance in the balance beam also landed her a spot in event’s individual final to be held on Wednesday afternoon having scored 12.950 points to place fifth in the preliminary round.

Francis was proud of her performance and on reaching her desired target of a Pan American final. “I’m really happy with how my competition went. I really wanted to go clean with no faults and see where that led me. So to come out of both those [events] and qualify in strong position, I was very happy,” said Francis.

The all-round final will be heavily competitive with the American duo of Riley McCusker and Kara Eaker starting as favourites after leading the qualifiers with average scores of 57.050 and 56.700, respectively. McCusker and Eaker also qualified in the top two for the individual beam final.

Strong field

Francis understands the requirements necessary to medal in such a strong field and will hope to improve her performances in all four events. “For the final, I will be trying to get slightly higher scores in every event. On the vault, I will be aiming to make my vault a bit higher and a cleaner landing. On the bars, I will be aiming to hit my handstands better and again try to stick the landing. [On the beam] get rid of any small wobbles. We might upgrade one of the skills for either the all-round or beam final. And then on floor, I had a bit of a short landing on my last tumble so I will definitely be looking to improve in that,” she said.

Francis credits her performance to her fellow Jamaican team members Kiara A Richmon and Toni-Ann Williams who she has developed a good chemistry with since arriving in Lima.

“I’m really proud of all three of us. We really fed off the energy of each one of us and every single time Toni went first and did a good performance and then Kiara went second and then I went third. And it helped to build from one another’s performances,” said Francis proudly.

– By Daniel Wheeler