The 2007 European Championships were hosted in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) only three years earlier the competition had also taken place there and Alina Kozich had become the last Ukrainian to win the European All-Around Title. Three years later Alina won bronze in the all-around and Floor and her medals remain as the most recent for Ukraine in those two apparatus. Her teammate Dariya Zgoba also made history by winning Ukraine’s most recent title on the uneven bars
As for the all-around Vanessa Ferrari arrived as the reigning World Champion so she was pressured to win the competition and she did, by a small margin though, just 0.175 ahead of Romania’s Sandra Izbasa. Her luck in the event finals would not be the same, having qualified first to the bars and beam final she would fall on both of them. On bars, her Comaneci salto would be her undoing (the Comaneci would also be a problem at the 2007 World Championships) and on beam, she missed her back handspring into full twist (the same skill she had missed at the 2006 World Championships) and this time it was even worse as she also fell on her double pike dismount slightly hitting her head with the structure that keeps the beam in its place.
As for other event final highlights, the defending European Champion on Vault, Anna Grudko, placed 3rd while the gold was won by Italy’s Carlotta Giovannini who had qualified first to the final. In the beam final, Yulia Lozhecko who had finished 6th at the previous Europeans edition jumped into the gold medal position thanks in great measure to her Arabian dismount; while Greece’s Stefani Bismpikou who had finished 8th in Volos a year earlier made history for her country by winning its only medal at a senior European Championships a beam bronze
Sandra Izbasa who was the silver medallist on beam could not walk properly after her dismount and was in tears after her routine most likely due to injury since she withdrew at the very last minute from the Floor Final and there was not enough time to have an alternate replace her. Sandra was the defending European Champion from the previous year and had qualified first to the Floor final, in her absence Vanessa Ferrari won Floor gold.
The home country’s top results were Lichelle Wong’s 8th place on bars, Lichelle had originally qualified 6th however during the final she lost rhythm and was forced to stop in the middle of her routine, then on her dismount, she sat her double front. As for Verona Van de Leur, she had better luck with her 9th place in the all-around, her highest score had been a 14.650 on beam. Competing in the preliminary round was new senior Sanne Wevers who placed 21st on bars and beam. Her time would come almost a decade later at the Rio Olympics.
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