This week, David Belyavskiy competed for the first time since Worlds. Not only that but he finished first in the all-around in the qualification, in addition to topping the parallel bars qualification and making the high bar and pommel horse finals. While for Belyavskiy, this is the second European Games, last time, he could not compete in the all-around due to injury. Today, he is very likely to become the all-around champion. He was happy with the results in the qualification but was a bit cautious talking about his chances in the finals:
“I’m glad that I had a successful competition in qualification today and didn’t make major mistakes. I did a new routine on bars, I remembered a routine on floor that I had not done in a while, I have a new dismount on rings. All the goals that I had for today have been achieved. I’m really happy that I made the finals on the events I expected to. Not once, I was in a situation where I failed in the finals after a successful qualification, so I’m not going to make any predictions after today. The most important thing was to make the all-around final. I also hope that I’ll continue fighting for medals on bars, high bar, and pommel horse.”
For a long time, Belyavskiy had been the best Russian all-arounder but Nikita Nagornyy and Artur Dalaloyan both beat him at last year’s Worlds. He hopes to re-establish his all-around lead but he’s also happy that there’s a lot of competition on the national team, as it ultimately makes the team better:
“I need to compete with myself in order to see that I still can do something. At the last Worlds, our young guys beat me and I need to be at their level. Actually, I’m really glad that we now have such strong guys because in the team competition, we challenge each other and our team grows stronger and stronger. We now have three good all-arounders and it brings results if we look at the last year’s Worlds.”
You can watch David Belyavskiy compete in the all-around, pommel horse, parallel bars, and high bar finals at the European Games on Saturday and Sunday (schedule and streams).
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