Igor Cassina

Igor Cassina
— Gymnast —
200px Igor Cassina in 2008
Personal information
Country represented	Italy
Born	(1977-08-15) August 15, 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: [ˈiɡor kasˈsina]; born August 15, 1977 in Seregno, Province of Milan) 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 in Anaheim 2003 the silver medal and in London 2009 the bronze medal. At the European Gymnastics Championships he won in Patras 2002 and Debrecen 2005 the silver medal and in Amsterdam 2007 the bronze medal, always in the man's horizontal bar. Igor Cassina had already entered the history of gymnastics before winning the Olympic gold. He was the first ever to perform a giant Kovacs straight with 1/1 turn (also known as a Kõlman in the straight position), which the International Gymnastics Federation decided to name Cassina after him as from 2002.

External links

• Igor Cassina at Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique