In 2019, Russian men won their first gold medal as a country (the Soviet men won quite a few golds at Worlds but the independent Russian team never rose higher than silver in the team final before 2019). With two World all-around champions on the team, they seemed like the most likely candidate for the Olympic gold. That gold would be the first in 25 years – Russian men headed by Alexey Nemov won team gold in Atlanta.
However, Russians came to Tokyo broken. They lost Ivan Stretovich, their dependable fourth man, who had wrist surgery and could not recover in time. Then they lost Artur Dalaloyan who tore his Achilles the day before leaving for the European Championships. Their reserve was losing the depth as some other gymnasts also succumbed to injuries. Dalaloyan miraculously managed to recover in time to do four events in Tokyo but that left Russia vulnerable on vault and floor. David Belyavskiy had an ankle injury that put his performances on vault and floor in doubt. In an unusual move, Russian coaches put Denis Abliazin on the main team. Abliazin only does three events and before he competed on Saturday, he hadn’t done floor since 2017. However, he was scoring much higher than Aleksandr Kartsev, the original fourth team member, on his three events and that justified his place on the team.
Russian team might not have looked as big gold contenders during the qualification. They qualified to the team final in third place and that depended on Dalaloyan’s routines on floor and vault (and on his Achilles to stay in place). Dalaloyan’s decision to go for all six events again in the team final seemed incredible risky and crazy. But he said he was going to give his all for the team and he did today.
Russia was the competition by over three points after four rotations but lost most of the advantage in the next two rotations. Ultimately, the medal positions came to the last routines – the brilliant HB set from Hashimoto Daiki to secure Japan’s silver and the inventive on-the-feet thinking from Nikita Nagorny to win the first Olympic team gold for Russia in 25 years.
Nikita Nagorny told the media:
“In the past half a year, we’ve gone through a very hard time. Artur is a hero. Denis [is a hero] too, he has two titan plates in his legs. He’s like Conor [McGregor] but two times stronger. David Belyavskiy’s here who now has [gold] medals from all the competitions. All the guys 100% deserved this medal”.
Tokyo had a typhoon warning this morning and Nagorny said the Russian team was that typhoon:
“They predicted a typhoon this morning. It went through and took what it was supposed to take. Now you don’t have to worry – there won’t be a typhoon. At the end, I wished for my score to go up faster. My floor routine didn’t go so well. I did it well enough to get my score but I thought that maybe [the judges] would want to give the victory to the home team.”
David Belyavskiy also thought that judging slightly favored the Japanese team:
“We left a lot of emotions in the arena, including when we learned the results. It was a good final, wasn’t it? [After Hashimoto’s score], I thought that we could still do it. The Japanese got a big score in the end. We doubted [that we would get enough] because the Games are in Japan. I’m not saying the judging was biased. It was ok but he [Hashimoto] could’ve gotten three tenths deducted and her got only one. Perhaps, I’m just imagining it. To win over Japan in their country is a good result. Overall, China should have been second but they made a mistake.”
Denis Abliazin stepped out of bounds as he often does and worried how it could have affected the team’s results:
“At the Rio Olympics, we were weaker than the Japanese team and now we’re strong. We proved this at the World Championships and now proved it again. We knew more or less that doing well on floor would be enough to get a medal, the question was which medal. I worried when I stepped out of bounds. Everything depended on floor, so I worried.”
Artur Dalaloyan and his Achilles were the heroes of the day. Dalaloyan said it was only his second floor routine since the surgery as he didn’t do full routines in training:
“I feel great. The emotions are masking all the pain I felt, so I feel great. I can’t say that any one event was harder for me than the others. At first, we felt more confident, we started calmly, but in the end, we started getting nervous, things were gettin heated. Especially since our last rotation was on floor. For me, it was only the second floor routine during the whole preparation period. We put Nikita last as our trump card. David was doing the calculations together with the coaches after high bar and we realized that it would be enough for Nikita to do his routine well.”
David Belyavskiy said the team believed in Dalaloyan’s ability to get through the final:
“We just believed in Artur. It was just trust – nothing else. He showed both in the qualification and in the final that he didn’t come here for nothing.”
He was actually pleased that Russia ended up third in the qualification and rotated with the US team:
“The qualification means nothing. You just need to get into the top eight teams and the rest depends on the final. We wanted to rotate with the US team because they’re energetic guys and they gave us energy.”
Tomorrow, the Russian women’s team will try to repeat the mens’ success and win Olympic team gold – something the independent Russian team has not yet been able to do.
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