Artem Dolgopyat comes to these World Championships as the reigning Olympic and European floor champion, however, the Worlds gold has eluded him so far and his two medals from Worlds are both silver. His main goal this season, though, is to try out his new floor routine and polish it before it’s time to qualify to the Olympics.
While Dolgopyat strives to be an all-arounder, constant injuries often prevent him from competing on all six events at major competitions. He was on the startlist for AA at the European Championships but ended up withdrawing from rings – his weakest event – as his shoulder was bothering him. Dolgopyat also competed at Euros only a month after breaking his foot. Due to not competing in the all-around at Euros, Dolgopyat only qualified to Worlds on individual events through the World Cup series and will compete on floor, pommel horse, and vault.
Before leaving for Worlds, Dolgopyat said he did not feel completely ready for the competition:
“The truth is that I’m not feeling especially great about it but I’m trying to build a new routine. I was just at two competitions and for now I don’t feel 100% ready but we continue to work hard in order to come to the World Championships ready. Even though the new routine that I did at the European Championships was enough for the first place, World Championships is a completely different stry. Of course, I feel the pressure but I am trying to think about it as little as possible.”
After the podium training, Dolgopyat told Gymnovosti the foot injury still bothers him a bit:
“I still feel the injury and there is very strong pain sometimes, but, for now, knock on wood, everything seems to be fine. There were only a couple of months between Euros and Worlds, so it was hard to prepare a new routine but I hope that I’ll recover in the two days before the qualification and everything will be fine.”
In September, Dolgopyat competed at two World Challenge Cups. In Paris, he qualified to the floor final in the first place but finished last in the final and was visibly limping after his routine. Nevertheless, he then competed in the vault final and won bronze. At the Szombathely World Challenge Cup, Dolgopyat topped the floor qualification with a massive 15.15 score for his 6.5 D routine but had issues in his routine in the final and finished fourth. Similarly, on vault he qualified in first with 14.6 but then only scored 13.5 in the final and finished seventh. Nevertheless, Dolgopyat feels that competing at those World Cups gave him additional confidence:
“I was thinking about skipping the World Cups, of course, but, on the other hand, I really wanted to prepare the new routine and I had to try it out at least in one competition. At first, we thought about going to one competition, but then I decided that I needed to go to two, because if things didn’t work out in the first one, I would not have the self-confidence. So, I needed two competitions, we went through them relatively ok and I hope everything will be well in the competition in two days.”
The men had two podium training days at this event, on Thursday and Saturday, Dolgopyat found positives in it but also felt it was too long of a wait before the competition:
“We arrived here in the evening before the first podium training day, so we just did some elements there. Today, we already did routines. In general, it was very good [to have two podium training sessions], but on the other hand, we already wanted to compete today, we’re starting to get tired already. But it’s also good because we got to try all the events again. Sometimes things don’t work out in podium training and that’s it, the next time you’re on the apparatus is only at the competition.”
Many gymnasts are excited about being a Liverpool due to its football history. For example, Milad Karimi said their team could get rewarded with a game tickets if they compete well in qualification. Dolgopyat said he was interested in the games but his main focus is on gymnastics:
“I saw that there are Liverpool games [while we’re here] but, honestly, it’s really hard to acclimate, the Israeli time is two hours ahead, and so I fall asleep already at 9 pm. And I also try to stay here, in gymnastics, and ignore other things.”
The head coach of the Israeli MAG team Sergei Vaisburg said they are trying to polish Dolgopyat’s floor routine before the next season and hope to upgrade it further:
“We finished the European Championships two months ago and immediately tried to change the routine for Dolgopyat and make it stronger. It was not enough time but still, we will try to upgrade the new routine. In terms of the current difficulty levels, his routine is one of the hardest in the world but I hope that Artem will be successful. But first of all that he will make the final. [Doing a new routine] is a risk that we’re taking now because it’s not an Olympic qualifier, so we have to try it now.”
