Cyr gymnast Runa Tschekorsky Orloff receives top sports prize from STAWAG

The freedom and creativity of the Cyr

Runa came to the Cyr in a roundabout way. In her first semester in Aachen in 2018, she actually wanted to take a gymnastics course at university sports. When this was fully booked, she spontaneously decided to take the rhönrad gymnastics course. Runa was immediately impressed by the freedom and creativity that this sport offered and wanted to see how much she could achieve.

She began training for the 2020 World Wheel Gymnastics Championships. Unfortunately, this had to be canceled due to the pandemic. But Runa didn't let that put her off. She continued to train and gradually discovered her enthusiasm for her current piece of sports equipment. The Cyr is a further development of the rhönrad. From 2021, Runa trained mostly with the Cyr and less and less with the rhönrad.

7th place at the World Championships in rhönrad gymnastics and cyr

In 2024, Runa took part in the World Championships in Wheel Gymnastics and Cyr in Almere in the Netherlands as part of the German delegation and achieved seventh place in the Cyr discipline. In preparation, Runa had trained twice a day for two months in order to be able to deliver at the World Championships. There she had to present two programs. In the technical program, ten figures are specified. The artistic program offers more freedom with its own choreography. The international atmosphere in Almere brought together the global rhönrad and cyr community. Runa was particularly pleased with the mutual support between the athletes.

With seventh place in a worldwide competition, Runa achieved the best result of Aachen's university athletes in the 2024 competition year, for which she has now been honored by STAWAG with the Aachen University Sports Top Sports Award. Dr. Christian Becker, CEO of STAWAG, presented the prize at the award ceremony as part of the university sports show at Theater Aachen.