Milad Karimi came to his first Olympics as one of the main contenders on floor and horizontal bar, but mistakes on both events prevented him from medaling. He is now training for the World Championships that will take place in Japan in October.
Karimi talked to Olympic.kz about his experience in Tokyo:
“It was my first Olympics. Of course, it’s impossible to put what I feel into words. I felt a lot of responsibility. I got to the Olympic Games in a good shape, I went through high training loads, together with some of the best gymnasts in the world – at joint training camps at Koncha-Zaspa in Ukraine. Competing at the Olympics is every athlete’s dream and, of course, I wanted to show better results.”
“Honestly, I have mixed feelings [about the Olympics]. One day, you don’t feel that it’s the Olympics when you go out to compete, on another day, you feel that. The lack of spectators, of course, was felt a lot. If we’re talking about results, then they’re actually unpredictable at the Olympics.”
Karimi qualified to all-around, floor, and horizontal bar finals. He placed 14th in AA, 5th on floor, and 8th on horizontal bar despite qualifying to the HB final in second place:
“The first final, in the all-around, the result was expected, since I focused on my strong events in training, on floor and high bar. Compared to the 2019 World Championships, at the Olympics, in the all-around final, I fell off the high bar, didn’t do my whole difficulty on it, made a major mistake on bars, and still, my result was better than at the World Championships where I competed cleanly and earned an Olympic spot.”
“I made the floor final with the score of 14.766. In the all-around final, I got 15.033 on floor. In the floor final, the winner got 14.9, so my result from the all-around final would have been enough for the gold. In the floor final, I competed eight and while other competed, I went to the warm-up gym and watched their routines from there. meanwhile, I noticed that other competitors didn’t get scores similar to their qualification, that they made mistakes, and, I guess, I also made a mistake – I started thinking that I could do better, that I could fight for the top three instead of just going out and doing my routine. I guess, I was affected by this pressure and by the status of the Olympic competition.”
On horizontal bar, Karimi fell and wasn’t able to do his full difficulty:
“Honestly, I still haven’t processed what happened. I was the first competitor. And, unlike on previous competition days, I didn’t have jitters. I felt calm and confident. I also needed to just do my routine and I would have been in the top three. But it’s the Olympics and mistakes aren’t rare in our sport which was what the final on high bar showed – four out of eight competitors fell. It’s also an experience and I’ll continue improving, working on myself.”
At the same time, he said he prefers competing first:
“It’s even better because you don’t see anyone compete before, you just do your routine. If you do it well, it puts additional pressure on other competitors. When you compete first, you can only rely on yourself.”
Karimi spent the pre-Olympic year mostly training in Ukraine, at the national training center and is going back there to train for Worlds:
“I have a two-week vacation, then a recovery training camp, and then I’ll continue training in Ukraine for the World Championships in Tokyo. So, I can say that the preparation continues.”
The main reason Karimi trains in Ukraine is lack of conditions at home. He posted a few videos of the national team gym in which equipment breaks apart during training.
Karimi said:
“I didn’t post this video in order to show how bad everything is in gymnastics and I haven’t expected such attention. It’s not that bad but people should start thinking about it. The horizontal bar got broken about four times, it would break once a year, including during my routine. I visited at a training center [abroad] with a lot of equipment. You press a button and a platform rises up, you don’t need to carry mats. I think it’s a gym of the future. I have a dream about a gym since my childhood. I would love for Kazakhstan to have more gyms where more kids would train, because gymnastics is the foundation of all sports.”
Support Gymnovosti on Patreon from only $1 a month and help us bring to you even more awesome gymnastics coverage!
