Utah gymnastics signee Clara Raposo in second after first day of Elite Canada
Amelie Morgan (Great Britain) isn’t the only University of Utah gymnast with aspirations to qualify for and compete at the Paris Olympics this summer.
Future Red Rock Clara Raposo — a 2025 Utah signee — is also attempting to qualify for the Games, representing Team Canada.
Raposo — rated a five-star recruit per College Gym News — deferred her enrollment for the current 2024 NCAA women’s gymnastics season in order to train for the Olympics, following a precedent set by former Utah great MyKayla Skinner, among many others.
Sunday night marked the first major meet of the year — Elite Canada — when it comes to making the Canadian Olympic team (Canada has already qualified as a team for the Paris Games, along with the United States, Great Britain, the People’s Republic of China, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Japan, Australia, Romania and the Republic of Korea), and Raposo had a notable performance.
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Competing in one of two groups of senior-level gymnasts, Raposo finished second in the all-around competition behind Cassie Lee, one of the gymnasts who represented Canada at the World Championships last fall.
Raposo scored a 50.600 in the all-around, 1.250 points behind Lee and 0.400 points ahead of third-place finisher Maddison Hajjar. Raposo also beat out former Alabama gymnastics standout Shallon Olsen, future Minnesota Golden Gopher Ava Stewart, and future Iowa Hawkeye Aurelie Tran, to name a few.
Clara Raposo - Day 1 Elite Canada pic.twitter.com/Sdy5l9LNA7
— Shannon Lambert (@Shannonmlambert) February 19, 2024
As far as individual event performances go, Raposo didn’t win an event title but was second on three events — balance beam, uneven bars and vault, with scores of 13.550 (vault), 13.250 (bars) and 13.050 (beam). Raposo also scored a 10.750 on floor exercise.
Raposo will compete again Tuesday, the final day of Elite Canada, and Utah head coach Carly Dockendorf will be in attendance. She is flying to British Columbia after Utah’s Presidents Day meet against rival UCLA in Los Angeles.
Red Rocks on the air
No. 4 Utah
vs. No. 8 UCLA
Monday, 3:30 p.m. MST
Pauley Pavilion, Los Angeles
TV: ESPN2
Stream: WatchESPN
For Day 2 of Elite Canada, gymnasts will be separated between the apparatuses according to the qualifying process based on Day 1 results. They will be seeded according to the number of athletes in the session.
The top athletes will start on vault, the second group will start on bars, the third group will start on beam, and the last group will start on floor. A random draw will determine the order of competition within a group on each apparatus.
Of note, Canadian all-around and apparatus rankings will be determined according to the combined results of the two days of competition.
The results of Elite Canada may be used in the process for selection of athletes for the national team and assignment to international competitions in 2024, aka the Paris Olympics.
