Only 3.5 months after his Achilles tear, Artur Dalaloyan competed on all six events at the Tokyo Olympics and will advance to the all-around final together with Nikita Nagorny ahead of his teammates David Belyavskiy and Aleksandr Kartsev. Dalaloyan was even listed as doing two vaults in the start list but, thankfully, only did one vault. His scores on vault and floor were higher than Belyavskiy’s which means they were counted towards the team score. That makes it very likely for Dalaloyan to compete on vault and floor again in the team final.
After his routine on floor, Dalaloyan burst in tears and many were worried he was crying out of pain. Turns out, he cried because his routine wasn’t as good as he wanted it to be – he scored 13.700, low by the standards of the 2018 World floor champion, but unbelievable high for someone who just had Achilles surgery.
Dalaloyan told the media:
“I couldn’t quite control my emotions, I haven’t lived up to my expectations. That’s why I had a bit of an emotional breakdown. Yesterday, I volunteered to do all events, I felt the strength to do it. I was confident in my floor and vault. I never expected to show such sloppiness on floor. On my way to Tokyo, I didn’t know yet that I would do floor but I ended up doing it. Because of that, all my emotions are mixed up. I need to get to the Olympic village and evaluate this situation. I need to digest it. The most valuable things for me was that after all that I managed to get myself together and do pommel horse. I didn’t know how to go out, I had to compete first, I still had tears in my eyes during the warm-up. I did the pommel horse routine and was overcome with emotions again”.
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