Artur Dalaloyan did all six events in both the qualification and the team final despite being just 3.5 months after the Achilles surgery. Tomorrow, he will compete on all six events once again in the all-around final. He is the 2018 World all-around champion but with his injury, other competitors need to make mistakes for him to end up on the podium. In the qualification, he finished 6th. On the other hand, in the team final, he improved his scores on all events but PB and HB and could potentially add another point to his qualification sum of scores if he competes cleanly.
After the team final, Dalaloyan was limping. When journalists asked him about it, he said the pain doesn’t bother him much on the competition floor but is causing discomfort in his daily life:
“I can’t say that I’m in pain. Overall, when three months passed after the surgery, it’s more like discomfort than pain. My ligament isn’t as elastic now as it used to be my whole life. There’s always some scar tissue where the surgery was. I feel that discomfort constantly when I walk. I wake up at night because of it. Right now, it’s harder for me to stand here and talk than it was to compete because I got tired and the emotions went away.”
In an interview to MK after the qualification, Dalaloyan talked about his recovery and how he decided to ignore his doctors’ recommendations.
“Do you know what is an injury recovery schedule? My personal opinion is that doctors can say and write what they want, but this schedule is more in the person’s head. Of course, there are some things general guidelines but it’s the condition of your body, how you are feeling, so your strength and, first of all, your positive mindset are ranked higher than the [doctors’] recommendations. That’s what you need to base [the recovery] on. That’s the path I chose right after the surgery. I woke up, one of my legs was fully encased in a cast, the other was in a special sleeve. The surgery was under anestesia, it was needed to avoid clots. I ate breakfast and the physical therapist visited me and said: “You should already try moving your toes inside the cast”. I asked him for a yoga mat and had a really good conditioning session. I stood in a handstand and worked really well on my upper body. I didn’t lose my work mindset for a second.”
He said the despair over the injury did not last long:
“When this all happened at Round Lake… It was an interesting moment. When you see everyone around you – the guys, coaches, doctors – how they all stare silently at your foot that doesn’t have an Achilles, and you can read everything in their eyes. You can see their mourning, their confusion – what’s next? I’ve felt despair for maybe an hour but not complete, rather, “Shoot, how did this happen? I’ll need to work so hard now!” I thought that I’d prepare for the Olympics in peace, go through that path, compete at the Games. And now there were going to be a lot of work and such problems for everyone. And I was the one causing that misbalance on the team, causing the guys headache – what will happen to the team? And these thoughts made me despair. But not even for a second I thought anything like “it’s all over, I’ll go drown myself…” No, not at all. There was another moment that motivated me. Our doctor Sergey Sergeyevich Gulevskiy and my wife took me to the hospital. When we left the training center, I called her: “I don’t know how to tell you that but my Achilles tore off…” Three seconds of silence. “Are you serious? You’re not joking?” “I’m not joking”. “Well, ok, it’s not a big deal, we’ll go to the hospital, they’ll fix everything and everything will be fine”. She said it so positively… The drive from Lobnya [the town near Round Lake] to the hospital in Orekhovo was long, across the whole city of Moscow. The doctor drove me from the training center, then my wife met us and we all rode together, joked, and smiled. I want to thank Sergey Sergeyevich, too, for not panicking at all. And so I didn’t feel like something bad happened. I kept planning during the drive – surgery, I need to stay in shape, not let it go in terms of nutrition.”
“Later I was told: “You’ll be in a cast for two weeks”. And I thought: “It’s ok, I’ll keep training. A cast is extra weight, working with extra weights is always good, you become stronger.” I know for sure that your mindset is very important. I got into a very good physical shape. I trained at the training center and it was just hell because I had the main practices and did my routines and needed to catch up with the guys but I also needed to do three physical therapy sessions a day – in the pool and with rubber bands. And I also needed to run at night and also adhere to the right nutrition. It was hard, it was truly hell but I enjoyed it. Constantly moving is joy. Not when you try to save yourself – there are guys like that who sit down and save themselves for the big moment – but when you have a goal and push ahead.”
Dalaloyan hopes the injury will teach him to listen to his body better:
“Of course, I feel some guilt now that I didn’t pay enough attention. Such injuries don’t happen suddenly. I guess I need to listen to my body more – what it needs, what it lacks. You can always see this but we just ignore some signals or pretend to ignore them. This also gives me experience – not everything can happen on its own, I need to keep things under control.”
Most of the pandemic, the Russian team spent at the training center and they were not allowed to leave on weekends like they used to in the pre-pandemic times. Dalaloyan, who has three kids, found the separation from his family incredibly hard:
“It was hard to stay at the training center non-stop and not be with our families. Honestly, I’ve been building this for a long time – to be able to combine personal life and the sport. It’s hard but at some point I was able to do it – to work during the day, come home, give kids their baths, take on some chores, so that my wife wouldn’t have to do all of it alone. It was great for me. This can’t be compared to mindless lying down in your room [at the training center], when you came back from practice and stare at your phone or the ceiling. That was degrading for me. But [being with family] was life. That’s why I had the energy.”
“When the pandemic started and the training center went on lockdown, it made me mentally weaker. What I spent a long time building was taken from me. I ended up in a cage – keep working, here’s your soup, here’s your buckwheat, here’s your gym, here’s your bed. It’s beneficial for some, it allows them to recover, but it’s the opposite for others. It depresses me.”
When the Russian team came to Basel for the European Championships they brought tshirts with Dalaloyan’s picture and words “The team is waiting for you”. Dalaloyan said this made him happy but he got upset by the reactions of the fans who mourned his career:
“When the team went to the European Championships in t-shirts made to support me, it made me happy, of course – the fact that the guys feel this way about me, that they believe in me and support me. But after that… It was like general mourning. I had the mindset that nothing happened, it’s just sports, it’s an injury, I’ll work hard and it will be over. But people weren’t like “Let’s go, Artur!”, they went “What a pity! Oh my God! He’ll miss the Olympics!” This, of course, did not motivate me.”
Dalaloyan and his teammate Nikita Nagorny will compete in the all-around final in Tokyo tomorrow.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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