Nikita Nagornyy has been one of the strongest gymnasts in the World for a while, and his won his first senior medal at the European Championships back in 2015. However, his first individual medal at Worlds did not happen until last year, when he won bronze in the all-around, while his friend and teammate Artur Dalaloyan became the all-around champion.
This year, Nagornyy came to Stuttgart as the reigning national and European all-around champion and a medal favorite. He’s been consistently outperforming his competitors in the all-around all year.
Nagornyy felt emotionally spent after the team final, where Russia won its first ever team gold in the history of the men’s program. He needed some more time to process the victory in the AA final:
“It wasn’t very hard. We’re just tired emotionally, and we lacked a lot today mentally. But the crowd was amazing, so the emotions came on their own. We came here, first of all, as a team. We came for the team gold. Today’s success is likely the consequence of the preparation for the team competition.”
When asked about Russia’s recent dominance in men’s gymnastics, Nagornyy replied:
“It’s a different time. Get used to it.”
Nagornyy was not looking at the scores during the competition and was only paying attention to his routines and Dalaloyan’s. He learned that he finished first, when Dalaloyan ran up to him with the Russian flags:
“I was not really following the scores, I was only following Artur, cheering for him as my teammate. I only saw his high bar and parallel bars routines. When I went to compete on high bar, I did not know, what was the gap between me and the second place and which score I needed to get. I was just doing my routine. When I landed, I saw that Artur was running to me with two flags and he told me we won first and second place. If we’re talking about processing what happened, I still haven’t processed that we won gold as a team.”
Gymnasts are often as (or even more) excited about achieving their own small goals as they are about winning medals. Nagornyy’s goal was to get 89+ in the all-around (he got 88+ in the team final), but he wasn’t able to achieve that:
“I put an additional goal for myself – to get 89 points, I really wanted it. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But now this won’t be a goal, this will be a dream to strive for, say, at the Olympic Games.”
Nagornyy opted to downgrade his all-around difficulty by 0.5 at Worlds but hopes to bring his full difficulty next year. He also plans on upgrading his vault. Nagornyy was not able to qualify to the parallel bars final, one of his strongest where he is the reigning European Champion, and did not have a good performance in the floor final, but was able to win gold in the vault final.
In the floor final, Nagornyy felt like competing first was the reason for his mistakes:
“They set me up to fail, they didn’t let me prepare. The first athlete is always given time to prepare. Those who compete after him have an advantage – while the first gymnast is waiting for the score, the rest can prepare for a couple of minutes. But my time was on as soon as I went up on the podium. It’s a horrible treatment of an athlete. I’m saying it not just for myself, but for everyone. Of course, while panicking, I ran to start and I wasn’t able to perform my routine successfully.”
Nagornyy wanted to win a medal on vault to cheer up his wife Daria Spiridonova who did not have a great performance in the uneven bars final the day before:
“I got upset for Dasha yesterday, I really hoped for her [to medal] but it didn’t happen. So, I decided to go out instead of her and win this medal for her.”
He was a bit worried about his second vault in the final as he did not spend much time on it during training:
“I was thinking about sticking the first vault. For two days, I stuck it and became a World champion both times, so, perhaps, I could stick it again and win again. Throughout the whole championships, I only did the second vault in the qualifications and the event final. I haven’t been even training it at all, there were even talks during the podium training about me not doing it in the qualifications and focusing on the team and all-around finals instead.”
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