Jeltkov, Sasha

Alex Jeltkov

Sport:
gymnastics

Country Represented:
Canada

Years Competed:
2000

Olympic Info:
Jeltkov was a member of Canada's men's gymnastics team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and finished 92nd in the qualification round of the individual all-around. He entered the Olympics as the world's top ranked gymnast in the horizontal bar, but failed to advance past the preliminary round in either that event or the floor exercises.

Career Highlights:
Jeltkov began to practice gymnastics at the age of five, and entered his first competition when he was nine years old. In 1990, at the age of 12, Jeltkov and his family emigrated to Israel from Georgia (in the former Soviet Union), but after spending a year there, moved again, this time to Canada. In 1996, a year after winning the National Junior Championship in the individual all-around, Jeltkov made the Canadian National team of which he has been a member ever since.

After finishing first in the individual all-around competition at the 1997 Canadian Championships, Jeltkov won the gold medal in the horizontal bar at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. The following year, Sasha captured the silver medal in the horizontal bar at the World Championships; he also finished 28th in the individual all-around.

Hardy Fink, the Canadian head coach, said: "His performance at the worlds wasn't a surprise to us...This is a guy who can basically do whatever he wants on the high bar. He actually made a mistake in the qualifying round at the worlds. But he adjusted by sticking in a double somersault with a half-turn-over-the-bar-catch and did it perfectly even though he never practiced the manoeuvre." In 2000, Sasha was ranked No. 1 in the world in the horizontal bar, and won the Canadian Championships in the all-around.

In 2001, Jeltkov finished second in the individual all-around at the Canadian championships, and placed fifth in horizontal bar and seventh in parallel bars at the Goodwill Games. In 2002, at the Commonwealth Games, Jeltkov won the silver medal in the team all-around and the bronze in the horizontal bar; he also finished seventh in the parallel bars and eighth in the vault. That same year, he won the gold medal in the horizontal bar at the World Cup event in Glasgow, Scotland, and the gold at Elite Canada in the all-around and high bar. At the 2002 World Championships, Jelktov finished 24th in the horizontal bar and 36th in the parallel bars.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. Feb. 25, 1978

Origin:
Tblissi, Georgia

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