David Belyavskiy qualified to the pommel horse final at the World Championships but finished only 7th. He feels like at his current shape, he would not have been able to compete for a medal in that final even without a fall:
“Let’s be honest, the scores that I saw now – I wouldn’t have been able to get such a score. The maximum score I’ve gotten would still not be enough for the top three, so, I need to work harder. The fall was a pure coincidence, I just slipped.”
Belyavskiy won gold in the all-around at the European Games earlier this year but got injured at the Russian Cup in August and could not do all-around at Worlds:
“I can’t be completely happy with how I did here because I really wanted to prepare all-around for this competition. But I was unable to do this because of the injuries I got after the Russian Cup. At the European Games, it seemed, I started getting back in shape, do all six events, but an injury happened again and I could only prepare three events for the World Championships. I was 100% ready to do them. At all the verifications I did, I got good scores. But when I came here, the bars didn’t go well for some reason.”
Belyavskiy enjoyed his status of the best Russian all-arounder for a few years but with Nikita Nagornyy and Artur Dalaloyan winning all-around gold medals at Worlds, some are wondering if he can get back to his previous status. He feels like he’s still quite competitive in the all-around:
“I can easily be in the top three because, considering the scores the guys get, it’s absolutely realistic. There’s been a rumor going on for a while that I’m “getting old”. I guess, since Artur and Nikita appeared. Of course, there are such talks, but I don’t care. I still need to work and to beat them in competition. That’s my goal. It will be hard to compete with Nikita at the Olympic Games because his difficulty is through-the-roof. But Artur’s difficulty and mine are the same. So, I need to work more on consistency.”
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