Igor Cassina

Igor Cassina
Igor Cassina in 2008
Personal information
Country represented	Italy
Born	(1977-08-15) 15 August 1977 Seregno, Italy
Height	180 cm (5 ft 11 in)
Discipline	Men's artistic gymnastics
Eponymous skills	Cassina (horizontal bar)
Medal record Olympic Games 2004 Athens Horizontal bar World Championships 2003 Anaheim Horizontal bar 2009 London Horizontal bar European Championships 2005 Debrecen Horizontal bar 2002 Patras Horizontal bar 2007 Amsterdam Horizontal bar Mediterranean Games 2001 Tunis Team 2001 Tunis Pommel horse

Igor Cassina (Italian pronunciation: [ˈiːɡor kasˈsiːna]; born 15 August 1977) is an Italian gymnast who won gold in the men's horizontal bar at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Biography

At the 2004 Summer Olympics, his competition saw a crowd protest over a low score for a routine by Alexei Nemov of Russia, which lasted for fifteen minutes until the score was raised. Despite this atmosphere, Cassina performed his exercise without major error, and he took the gold medal over Paul Hamm of the U.S., even though they tied. This gold was also the 500th Italian medal at the Summer Olympics. At the 2008 Summer Olympics he was 4th in the man's horizontal bar.

At the World Gymnastics Championships, he won the silver medal in Anaheim 2003 and the bronze in London 2009. At the European Gymnastics Championships, he won silver in Patras 2002 and Debrecen 2005 and bronze in Amsterdam 2007, always on the horizontal bar. Before winning the Olympic gold, Cassina had already made gymnastics history as the first to perform a giant Kovacs straight with 1/1 turn (also known as a Kõlman in the straight position), which the International Gymnastics Federation named Cassina after him as of 2002.

External links

• Igor Cassina at the International Gymnastics Federation
• Igor Cassina at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)