For Artur Dalaloyan, this has been a pretty busy competition. He competed on all six events in the qualification and the team final where Russia placed second. Then he won the all-around final. He also won the Longines Prize for Elegance. Today, he won another gold – this time on floor. And tomorrow he will compete in all three finals while being expected to medal in at least two of them. Dalaloyan said to R-Sport he hopes he won’t be too tired for the finals tomorrow:
“I’ll be setting myself up for tomorrow. God help me to have enough strength. To compete on three events in the last day of competition isn’t easy but I’ll manage. Regarding vault, I’ll do the same vaults with 5.6 difficulty that I prepared. But there’s the Korean gymnast who qualified in first place, he has higher difficulty. So, I’ll focus on execution and elegance [laughs], after all, I got the prize yesterday!”
Valentina Rodionenko went from throwing Dalaloyan under the bus and claiming it was his fault the team lost gold to praising him as a hero:
“Artur is just a hero. Just a hero. I can’t say that he did something impossible. He simply did his routine at the best possible level. The mistake in the team final really motivated him. Have you noticed how he got himself together on bars in the all-around final? He behaved very knowledgeably and professionally. Finally, the system that we have been building for so long is working. We have a reserve bench and surely you will see new names on the team at the Olympics and maybe even at Worlds in Stuttgart”.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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