Nagornyy: I just carried out my task here

Nikita Nagornyy had a strong performance in the all-around final, gaining almost a full point compared to the qualification and finishing with 88.032. No one else in the field could get even close to him and David Belyavskiy who finished second was more than two points behind him with 85.864. The 2020 junior European AA champion Illia Kovtun won a surprise bronze after finishing 11th in the qualification. The 17-year-old at his first senior international competition gives some hope to the Ukrainian program after Oleg Verniaiev has been suspended and Petro Pakhniuk had to withdraw from the competition due to a triceps tear.

It seems that the lack of competition made things less exciting for Nagornyy and he just focused on perfecting his routines, as he told MatchTV.

Q: Nikita, I’m looking at the medal, and it’s more yellow than gold, does it bother you?

A: Doesn’t look so good, right? Actually, no, I don’t mind. It’s just a medal. But it could have been made to look nicer, no offence.

Q: Speed skaters have small medals but they’re made out of real gold, silver, and bronze. Would such an option be better?

A: It would be better if the medal was just nice-looking, confident, and big. We had pretty medals at the Montreal Worlds in 2017, with glass in the center, shimmering.* That is, the design of these medals was notable. But there were also some worse than this one. In any case, it’s like a motivation prize for good work. It all also depends on the competition. If a victory is achieved in a fight, it means more, but here, I just carried out my task. I didn’t strive to win.

Q: In the qualifications, bars didn’t quite go as planned. How was it today?

A: Today, I fixed the mistake, it was also my goal, and I’ve accomplished it. The bars final is the day after tomorrow and I want to do an even cleaner routine.

Q: Also in the qualification, you wanted to do your full routine on high bar but weren’t able to.

A: Today I was able to do everything, it worked out.

Q: This ability to turn yourself on in the final and do everything better than in the qualification – have you always had it or it came with experience?

A: With experience, of course. In any case, different competition days come with feeling differently, different approaches to routines, different mindsets. You need experience for that.

Q: Yesterday, when talking about the atmosphere, you said that it was kind of dead here. Did it feel this way today as well?

A: Not really, there were more people today and the athletes that didn’t make the all-around final sat in the stands, cheered for us, clapped. Today I felt the presence of spectators and that gave me energy.

Q: Two competition days are over and two more are ahead. David Belyavskiy said that you even prepared for this schedule.

A: We prepared to work two days in a row, not four. We had “routine” days where we would do our routines for two days in a row but we didn’t have four-days-in-a-row schedules in training. And, in any case, three events [in a day] is a bit easier than six but I will have to give it my all tomorrow because I have three finals on the same day.

Q: But still, it will be a bit easier after the victory in the all-around, right?

A: Of course not. Tomorrow, everything starts from scratch and it will be two times harder because physically, we’ll feel much worse than today. See for yourself – it’s 8 pm now, we’re competing at 1 pm tomorrow. Today, until 1 am, I will be doing rehab in order to compete tomorrow. Massage, physical therapy, and so on.

Q: Will we see the triple pike on floor tomorrow?

A: I didn’t do it today, it was not needed in the all-around. I did it in the qualification and will do it tomorrow, yes.

*I suspect Nagornyy confused Montreal medals with something else (perhaps, with the medals from 2019 Worlds) because Nagornyy didn’t win anything in Montreal and the medals looked like this: