Toba gymnasts into the high bar final and leads team to fourth place at the European Championships

Gymnastics hero Andreas Toba has extended his international career by a few more days in front of his home crowd. At the European Championships in Leipzig, which were also held as a team event, the 34-year-old put on a fantastic performance in the high bar final.

Only just missing out on bronze

One day after the German women's team silver medal, the Hanoverian helped the squad of Nils Dunkel (Halle/Saale), Milan Hosseini (Böckingen), Dario Sissakis (Berlin) and Timo Eder (Ludwigsburg) to an unexpectedly strong fourth place in the team all-around with 13.566 points. With 242.595 points, they were not even 0.3 points short of bronze.

"We can be really proud of ourselves. I didn't expect us to come so close to a medal," said Dunkel.

Last year, they only managed ninth place at the European Championships in Rimini, but this time the team of new national coach Jens Milbradt, which is undergoing radical change, presented itself as stable and balanced. Great Britain secured team gold in Leipzig with 247.528 points ahead of Switzerland (245.727) and Italy (242.826).

Toba's announced farewell

Toba had announced before the home European Championships that he would end his international career in Leipzig. The 2021 European Championship silver medallist on high bar only competed on rings, high bar and pommel horse in Exhibition Hall 1. With his impressive performance on his favorite apparatus, he can now compete for one more medal on Saturday. He will then take up his position as state coach in Hanover on June 1 and only wants to compete in the national league if his new job allows it.

Of Toba's four Olympic appearances, the one in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 will be particularly memorable, when he tore his cruciate ligament and performed in the team qualification on the pommel horse. This made him famous far beyond the gymnastics world as the "Hero de Janeiro".

More final places for Eder and Dunkel

In addition to Toba on high bar, Timo Eder and Nils Dunkel also surprisingly reached the final on parallel bars on Saturday. Both final debutant Eder and the former European Championship bronze medallist on pommel horse scored 13.800 points for their routines. In addition, the 19-year-old Eder and Dunkel qualified for the six-event final on Thursday.