Oleg Verniaiev had to miss the first eight months of the season while recovering from his two surgeries. He’s been saying he would push to return in time for Worlds but it looks like he’s getting to compete a bit earlier.
Verniaiev has announced on his Instagram that today will be his first competition – he will represent Saar club in Bundesliga. Verniaiev has been competing for Saar for a while now and even waited until the end of the Bundesliga season last year before he stopped training and got the surgery.
He will also soon return to compete for the Ukrainian team – he is listed on all six events on the start lists for the upcoming Szombathely Cup (September 21-23). The team is surely waiting for his return since after the disappointing 13th place finish at Euros, they will need his help to make the top-24 at Worlds and to qualify to the next Worlds as a team.
Gennady Sartynsky, the head coach of the Ukrainian MAG team, said in an interview to UA:Pershiy that according to his calculations having Verniaiev on the team at Euros would’ve added about 1.5 points on every even. This would’ve put the team in contention for a medal.
Sartynsky credits the past team success to Verniaiev:
“We’ve always competed at the team competitions well because of Oleg. If we’re taking the European Championships, I calculated that [Oleg would add] about 1.5 points on every even. Plus, he’s the team leader, it’s a completely different teamwork with him around”.
Verniaiev said that the recovery has been quite slow with regular setbacks:
“It’s all improving but it’s such a hard and monotonous process. Say, I try something new every two-three days, it goes fine and then boom, I did one element, pulled something and the practice is over for that day”.
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