Petro Pakhniuk came to the European Games as the silver European medalist on parallel bars and upgraded his routine by 0.3 but ended up making mistakes in the qualification and not making the final on this event. He made the all-around final and the floor final. At Euros, Gennady Sartynsky, the head coach of the men’s team, said that Pakhniuk is capable of doing 6.5 or 6.6 difficulty on bars but is too afraid.
Pakhniuk said he has trouble doing this routine consistently:
“This level for me is the highest I’ve ever done, it’s hard. I don’t know how to explain, but this difficulty, the leading athletes are competing with such difficulty, the ones like Oleg, like David. It’s the highest difficulty and I am able to do it but I didn’t manage it here. I can’t seem to manage to make it consistent, no matter whether I do it 10 times a day or 20. The next day, I can come to the gym and not be able to do it.”
Pakhniuk also had an unfortunate performance on rings where he had one finger slip out of the grip and just tried to stay on the rings and not have a fall until the end of the routine.
It’s his second European Games, although the last time he competed for Azerbaijan. He’s not a fan of the format, though, especially of the one-per-country rule for the event finals (surely, the gymnerds are in complete agreement with him):
“I don’t like this format of European Games because you know, each country has two strong gymnasts and both of them normally can make a final. But here they allow only one athlete per country and only six people in the final. Maybe, you know, that’s to make it easier for Belarus to win medals, I don’t know how else to explain it. I can be fourth in the qualification but the person who placed tenth will get into the final even though their score is lower, while I won’t make it. That’s the format of the competition.”
Both Pakhniuk and Verniaiev said a big disadvantage of the Athlete Village was not having a sauna as it would be very helpful for the recovery:
“The equipment is good, I like it. The organization is good, the food is good, they feed us well. There’s no air conditioning, so it’s hard to sleep. The bed is too hard as well, and there’s no sauna or a pool”.
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