Russian men’s team won its first-ever gold medal in the team final at the World Championships. The USSR won the team gold in 1991, the last team competition at Worlds before the country ceased to exist. Russian team won silver four times and bronze once and they also were the 1996 Olympic champions, yet the gold in the team final at Worlds never happened until this year. In 2018, Russia lost to China by 0.049, less than even the minimum deduction for a mistake. The loss haunted them the whole year and the team gold was their main goal for the competition.
Nikita Nagornyy was the last gymnast on the last event of the day – high bar. All the pressure was on him but he did not look at the scores, he was just trying to do the best routine he could:
“I’m incredibly happy because this is what has motivated me in the last year to come to the gym every day and train. Not only me but the whole team as well. We came here exactly for this medal, we got it and we’re extremely happy. Before my last routine, I wasn’t looking at the score, wasn’t looking at the screen. My task was to go out and do my best routine. I got a really good score. I think I’ve given it my 300%.”
Despite the fact that China had a strong competition as well and was leading over Russia at several points of the competition, Nagornyy never doubted they would win:
“I actually believed until the last moment that we would become the World Champions. Starting in the morning, I was throwing phrases like “Let’s put golden ribbons on our necks today”, that was my mood, it was kind of persuading or calming myself. We started well, then David made a small mistake on pommel horse and both Vanya and I got a bit lower scores. Denis made a small mistake on rings and after vault, when we saw that we were losing by 1.5 points, we realized that the next event was parallel bars, where the Chinese are the perfection. And when Artur made a mistake, we became so angry, not disappointed, but angry. We weren’t nervous at all, we all said that we were fighting till the end, not giving up, believing till the end. Our eyes were lit up, we came out and knew that we would do everything from the beginning to the end. And this faith helped us – never give up, fight till the end and that’s it.”
“Today, we gave 300% out of the possible 100%. We’re World Champions now and this is a nice feeling. I didn’t even realize it right away after I had landed my dismount.”
“I wasn’t watching the Chinese gymnasts because I needed to get into the right state fo mine, I did the last routine, everything depended on me. Yesterday, before going to sleep, I think, I did the routine 400 times in my head. I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 am because I knew I would be going last.”
Nagornyy hit 87.333 in the all-around in the qualification, almost a point higher than Artur Dalaloyan in the second place. However, in the team final, his scores added up to 88.431, a whole point improvement from a pretty good competition in the qualification. He said he did not know he did better today but hopes he can do even better on Friday, in the all-around final:
“We’ll rest and I hope that I’ll get an even higher score the day after tomorrow. I don’t think about scores, I think about the work I have to go out and do.”
The team gold was so important to him, he could not even think about the rest of the competition:
“Before this medal, there was nothing in my head. I couldn’t say anything about the all-around, about the finals. The main goal was the team final. We came just for this medal. Now I’ll come to my room, get some rest, and will think about the final and the other competition days.”
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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