After the silver in the all-around final, David Belyavskiy did not have a great pommel horse final the next day. He had a fall along with several other gymnasts in this final and ended up in the sixth place. Today, he will have two more chances to medal – on parallel bars and horizontal bar, the events on which he won multiple European medals in the past. Belyavskiy talked to MatchTV about the final and his love for gymnastics that keeps him in the sport.
Q: The fall off the pommel horse on your last element – what happened?
A: I went into the dismount incorrectly and had to improvise. The dismount has to be done with your left side to the horse but I started turning and realized that I couldn’t get there, so I started trying to get out of it and that’s why I fell.
Q: People often say that pommel horse is the most treacherous out of men’s events.
A: Yes, perhaps, together with the horizontal bar.
Q: Is there such a thing as a pommel horse specialist mentality?
A: I guess these people need to be more level-headed. There are explosive guys, it’s more fitting for vault and floor. And on pommel horse, more sluggish ones are better. [laughs]
Q: Yesterday, you were the oldest competitor in the all-around final. Do you feel like a veteran?
A: It’s cool if it’s true. Yesterday, I was on the same medal podium as 17-year-old Kovtun from Ukraine, so, that means, age isn’t everything. It’s actually interesting, there are older gymnasts but they usually compete on individual events and there are many guys like that in Europe. I’m not the oldest here, at the European Championships, that’s for sure. I saw Sašo Bertoncelj here, he’s 36. Filip Ude also competed here, he’s 34. Matvey Petrov is a bit older than me.
Q: Usually, people stay for such a long time in gymnastics, the sport that they started as kids, for one of the two reasons: either they love the sport and what they do or they realize at some point that they don’t know how to do anything else.
A: No, the second case is definitely not me. I really like it. My wife supports me, she says: “Well, let’s do a couple more Olympics, it will be fine”. We live and breath it, we love it. There are other things I do besides gymnastics, so it’s not like I’ll retire and there will be nothing.
Q: What does your wife feel about the fact that you aren’t home for 300 days a year?
A: We’ve been together since 2012 and, I think, she got used to it somehow. Although it was hard for her at first, of course. But everyone understands that it’s a job. You leave, do the work, and come home.
Q: Being a father is not such a frequent phenomenon in artistic gymnastics. Did it change your attitudes towards what you do?
A: Of course. For example, I want to make my daughter happy now. She told me to bring four medals from these European Championships. I don’t know where she got this number. I tell her: “Babygirl, I don’t plan on doing four events, I will do only two, I can’t bring four”. And she’s like: “Well, ok, still bring four”. I wasn’t supposed to do the all-around here.
Q: And now you have the all-around medal.
A: And there are parallel bars and high bar ahead of me. We’ll see. But I won’t be able to bring four already.
Q: Nikita Nagornyy said yesterday that he was going to do recovery treatments until 1 am after the all-around. How are your injuries that accumulated throughout, let’s admit, quite a long career?
A: It always bothers you, sometimes more, sometimes less. I don’t have any problems with my shoulders but my wrists and ankles bother me sometimes. But I’m not young either, honestly. When it really bothered me, this happened with my wrists, I got a series of injections, but I didn’t have surgery.
Q: Were you able to get into the competition mode by now?
A: At this competition – definitely. On pommel horse, perhaps, I didn’t have enough mental energy – I spent a lot of energy, both physical and mental, in the all-around.
Q: Before your routines, you always stand with your head and shoulders down and look down in front of you. What is going on in your head during these moments?
A: Nothing. I try to clam down and steady my breath.
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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