Nagornyy: I can train without pain now

Nikita Nagornyy is the World bronze AA medalist and is coming to the European Championships with the highest combined difficulty (he leads over Artur Dalaloyan by almost a point).

He also won almost everything at the Russian Championships last month and the gold at the Birmingham World Cup. He is clearly one of the main contenders for the all-around title at Euros but he will have to fight his teammate, the reigning World champion and silver European champion Dalaloyan.

After the Russian Championships, Nagornyy talked to Gymnastika, the magazine of the Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation.

“Last World Championships gave me huge experience. I don’t know what will happen next but the analysis I did for myself is working so far. I’ve been preparing for the Russian Championships for two weeks, and before that, I was in Germany getting treatment. Now, thanks to our doctor Sergei Gulevskiy and physical therapist Alexei Blyushke, I can train without thinking whether something hurts. I haven’t experienced this in the past two years since the Rio Olympics. And now I’m getting out there and just doing my routines, confidently and calmly. Thanks to the doctors for that.”

“To draw some conclusions, even though there was some anxiety about bars, generally, I went through all the events with confidence. Although, I’m not completely happy with how I did. On the second day of the all-around, I managed to do only 50% of what I planned to show. Rings, bars and pommel horse – I did the routines but with serious mistakes. And for me, same as for any gymnast, the most important thing is to get rid of serious mistakes. You can tolerate the minor mistakes somewhat, a lot depends on the situation, sometimes you got yourself together, but sometimes you relaxed a bit and they appear, that’s acceptable. But the ones where you can lose three tenths or even half a point – they need to be dealt with. Now, a week and a half before the European Championships, I will compete at the Birmingham World Cup, it will be sort of a verification, I’ll try to get rid of all the problems, so that I’ll compete at the European Championships completely prepared.”

“For a while now, I haven’t been competing for the scores, when you look at the scoreboard during the competition and try to calculate what you need to do next. Of course, the competition motivates me, but sometimes there are such goals in your head that motivate much more. In Penza, among the men, there was almost no competition, but I didn’t relax because of it. In that aspect, I’ve decided a long time ago: I don’t have any competitors except myself. Remember the World Championships in Montreal? I arrived there with a very strong floor routine but got burned out even before leaving home. I did so many repetitions that it affected me physically. At practices, I saw that my main competitor – Kenzo Shirai – was in perfect shape, while I wasn’t. And this pre-competition fight really hurts you mentally, it completely throws your competition strategy away: when in your head, the goal is to go out there during the practice and just do it once, no matter how, just to warm up. You fall – you get up, no worries. But here, you see that your competitor goes out and does everything, while you start and fall and you get worked up. You start doing even more, and more, and more repetitions and get completely exhausted. This is what I have to fight. So, since then, I decided: I don’t have any competitors besides myself. I have certain tasks and I need to complete them. That’s it. This year, I plan to finish upgrading my routines in order to be able to be polishing everything without rush for half a year before the Olympics and not think about anything. After all, there’s only one more year left to train and then it’s the Olympic season and you need to show all four years of work. In Rio, I was still young. But now I understand that I have an opportunity to show what I can do and I need to use that opportunity.”

Photo: E. Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation

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