Emma Malabuyo eyes busy schedule ahead, balancing Olympic qualifying events and NCAA season
Plus, Brody Malone returns to competition and a look back at Team France on the floor exercise from the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney
Artistic Gymnastics
University of California at Los Angeles women’s gymnastics junior Emma Malabuyo is preparing for a busy four week stretch, beginning in the middle of February.
Now representing the Philippines, the Tokyo 2020 U.S. alternate plans to attend the World Cup in Cairo 15-18 February followed by the World Cup in Cottbus, Germany, 22-25 February.
She’ll come back to the U.S. briefly to compete in a dual meet between her UCLA Bruins and Stanford University on 1 March.
After that, she’ll hit the road again for one last World Cup appearance when the circuit heads to Baku, Azerbaijan, 7-10 March.
“It’s definitely overwhelming and a little bit chaotic, but I’m doing my best to just prepare for all these trips,” Malabuyo told Olympics.com. “I think I can handle it. I’ve had a lot of experience. I’m just mainly very excited for this opportunity.”
Having first competed for the Philippines last summer at the Asian Championships, Malabuyo asked the federation about other possibilities to obtain a quota spot for Paris 2024 of which there are two per apparatus available through the World Cup series which take in to account an athlete’s best two of three finishes.
She plans to compete on balance beam and floor exercise at each of the three competitions.
Stay tuned to Olympics.com for more from Malabuyo ahead of competition in Cairo.
Brody Malone returns to competition
Tokyo 2020 Olympian and 2022 World horizonal bar champion Brody Malone of the United States made his return to competition last weekend at the Houston National Invitational.
The 24-year-old suffered a season ending injury last spring at the DTB Cup in Stuttgart, Germany. Malone landed awkwardly after getting lost in the air while performing a high bar dismount.
He required multiple surgeries following the incident.
In Houston, Malone competed on three events, the pommel horse, still rings and parallel bars.
He was able to perform a full routine on the pommel horse, but performed just a layout salto dismount off the parallel bars and no dismount off the rings, opting instead to simply hop off.
“First competition back was awesome!” Malone said in an Instagram post. “It was amazing to be back out on the floor even though I’m not doing full dismounts yet. I feel incredibly blessed and grateful for everyone who has gotten me back to this point.”
Malone’s return is good news for a surging U.S. squad that won its first World team medal in nearly a decade last season with the 2021 and 2022 U.S. champ sidelined.
From the vault…
This week, we take a look back at Team France’s performance on the floor exercise during qualifying at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. The squad was led by a 9.587 score from Anne-Sophie Endeler as they finished eighth overall.