Denis Abliazin has been struggling with injuries since the 2016 Olympics. He broke his leg in 2016 and had to miss the 2017 European Championships. At Worlds that year, he was only able to compete on rings but won silver on the event. In 2018, the Russian team opted to leave him out of the World Championships in order to keep his eligibility for a nominative spot. However, Abliazin got injured at the end of the year and had to miss the first two competitions of the World Cup series. The beginning of 2019 looked promising for him when he won gold on both rings and vault at the European Championships. However, by Worlds, he started experiencing pain again and was able to compete only on rings in the team final there.
Recently, in practice, he fractured both legs. Abliazin said to TASS that one of the reasons for the reasons for that was the old injury from Rio:
“The old injury from the 2016 Olympic Games reminded me of itself. I broke the tibia and the fibula in my left leg and fractured the tibia in my right leg. I had surgery, the broken bones were fixated with titanium rods.”
Abliazin says the expected recovery is about half a year and he hopes to be able to compete at the European Championships in March:
“I will start conditioning my upper body in January. Right now, any training is prohibited. But I should be able to recover completely by the Russian Championships which will take place in March. The doctors say that the recovery will take about half a year.”
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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