Turkey is trying to make history and qualify a full men’s team to the Tokyo Olympics and Ferhat Arican is working very hard to be able to help his team. One of his dreams is to elevate the level of gymnastics in Turkey even higher and to achieve that, he opened a gym in his native city where he works as a coach with little kids. At the European Games, Arican ended up being the sole representative of Turkey in the all-around final, since his teammate Ahmet Onder withdrew from leg events to protect his ankle. On a good day, Arican can potentially fight for an all-around medal and he will definitely give a lot of fight in the parallel bars final.
Overall, he was happy with the competition except for his pommel horse routine:
“It was really good for me, except for pommels, last apparatus. My goal this competition was to make all-around, p-bar final, and pommel horse finals, but now the pommel horse final did not happen. But it’s OK, my all-around performance was good, if I didn’t fall from the pommel horse, I think I would have qualified to the final in the second place. It does not matter, though, now my goal in a medal in the all-around and, after that, of course, a medal on p-bars.”
He tries to block off everything going on around him and focus on his own routine, so he does not see what other gymnasts are doing:
“I concentrate on my routine and my performance. I do not see the other gymnasts, I just concentrate on my performance. If I do my routine and my performance is good, I will definitely get a medal. This is what’s important for me.
He hopes to get a bit of rest after the Games and the focus on the preparation for Worlds. His big goal is a p-bars medal in Stuttgart:
” I’ll have a short vacation because it’s been a very long season and after the Europan championships and this competition, we need a little bit of rest. And afterward, the most important competition this year is Stuttgart of course. We have a goal to go to the Olympic Games with the team, and I want to take a p-bar medal.”
After retirement, he plans on focusing on his gymnastics academy and training the next generation of Turkish gymnasts:
“I have a gymnastics academy in my city, in Izmir. I feel very good about this, I want to train children to be even better gymnasts than we are. I have high hopes for this. And after retirement, I will manage the academy in Izmir. This is very important for me.”
You can watch Ferhat Arican compete in the all-around final and the parallel bars final at the European Games on Saturday and Sunday (schedule and streams).
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