The men’s team final at the World Championships today was extremely dramatic. The main battle was between Russia and China. Both teams made mistakes throughout the competition but the main showdown happened on parallel bars and high bar. Russia was leading by almost two points over China after four rotations and they just had two amazing stuck vaults from Nagornyy and Dalaloyan. On parallel bars, Artur Dalaloyan who was supposed to bring a huge score had a fall at the beginning of the routine. After five rotations, China moved into first, leading by a point. Xiao went last for China on high bar and had a fall which could potentially mean a win for Russia. However, Nagornyy, who went last for Russia, had some issues during his routine and didn’t get a high enough score. In the end, China won gold by only 0.05.
This is the first team Worlds medal for Russia since 2006, and they did qualify to Tokyo by placing in the top-3, so overall they did a pretty great job today. However, they had all the chances to win gold and lost by an extremely small margin, so it’s not surprising the team started crying after learning they took the second place.
Nikolai Kuksenkov said to R-Sport that while the rest of the team were crying he felt too drained emotionally to cry:
“It’s very upsetting, [our performance] wasn’t enough. Almost all the guys were crying. Generally, I’m a very emotional person but I couldn’t show emotions here. I cried tears of joy in Rio. Here, it was also possible to cry because of the defeat but I was just drained today”.
Kuksenkov was also pleased that fans at home are showing interest in gymnastics:
“It’s nice that people not only analyze football matches, who went and for how many minutes, but are also trying to understand gymnastics. People were writing that it is our first chance at gold after the breakdown of the USSR. I can’t say that it put pressure on us mentally. The level of gymnastics in the world is so high that both China and Japan are always at the top but our young guys prepared for this championships really well, both Artur and Nikita”.
Dmitrii Lankin thinks that the victory could go either way and depended on the judging:
“I don’t even know… We did enough. It’s just, as the guys say, there’s no such deduction as 0.05. It would have been enough to just smile and we would’ve won gold. Well, we did smile but we didn’t get the gold… We’ll keep working. I guess we didn’t do enough for the gold even though it doesn’t seem so. 12 years [since the last team medal at Worlds] is a long time, it’s good that we managed to break this. The Olympic qualification is also good but we have such emotions right now that you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry”.
David Belyavskiy believes that the team could do better on every event but vault and rings:
“We could compete better on pommel horse, and even on all the events, we could do better! Except for vault and rings, I guess, we were practically at our maximum on those events today. Of course, qualifying to the Olympics adds positive emotions”.
Belyavskiy said he was not too upset about not making the all-around final after Nagornyy and Dalaloyan posted higher results:
“Actually, I can’t say I was too upset. I think I wasn’t ready for the all-around at this World Championships. The guys were stronger than me”.
Belyavskiy’s wife and baby daughter came to Doha to support him. Alisia was even wearing a t-shirt with her dad’s name and face. Belyavskiy said their presence helped him:
“You know, I’m always happy to see my family and the fact that they’re here, it motivates me a great deal, I want to compete better”.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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