The nominative MAG roster that Ukraine submitted for the 2022 notably has two prominent gymnasts missing – Petro Pakhniuk and Nazar Chepurnyi. Instead, veteran Igor Radivilov and the young star Illia Kovtun will be joined by three relative newcomers, Mykyta Melnikov, Pantely Kolodii, and Bohdan Suprun. Melnikov and Kolodii had a chance to represent Ukraine at Euros and Szombathely WC this year and for 18-Suprun, this will be his debut at the senior international level. Nazar Chepurnyi is missing the competition due to a hand injury and will undergo surgery next month.
The Ukraian MAG team is now training together except for Pakhniuk, Radivilov and Chepurnyi. Pakhniuk went to Italy shortly before the war and stayed there. Radivilov and Chepurnyi got stuck in Ukraine after the start of the war and could not leave at first. Then Radivilov’s German club invited him to stay there and Chepurnyi moved to Prague. Currently, Radivilov is back in Ukraine and training at the national team training center although most of Ukraine still experiences Russian rocket fire.
At these Worlds, after spending the las half a year as refugees in different parts of Europe, Ukrainian MAG are not likely to fight for a spot at the team final, let alone a team medal. So, it makes sense to give some major meet experience to the young ones and leave the experienced Petro Pakhniuk at home. Unlike Radivilov, Pakhniuk is not necessarily an individual medal contender at this moment, although his scores on multiple events are certainly valuable for a team competition. The head coach of the MAG team Gennady Sartynsky said that giving young gymnasts experience was his main reason for the team selection:
“Pakhniuk is now in Italy with his children. I don’t know what will happen next. We need to prepare the team for the next year because there will also be qualifiers [for big competitions]. At the [2023] European Championships, it will be necessary to finish among the top 13 teams in order to qualify to the World Championships. That is why we need to work with young people more. Which is exactly what we are doing.”
“Pakhniuk is an experienced gymnast, he will always be able to perform like this. But young people need to be tried and tested so that they participated at such [big] competitions and be competitive against other gymnasts. Hence, this team. We have what we have. There’s only one task – to get to the Olympic Games, to qualify. We need young people. So we are training them, trying new gymnasts out.”
Petro Pakhniuk, clearly not happy with the Worlds team selection, decided to challenge it publicly and announced he wants to leave the national team if he is not sent to Worlds:
“I do not agree with the decision not to put me on the team for the 2022 World Championships with the reasoning from the head coach (Sartynsky G. L.), “I need to try and test the young ones”. In order to be able to, how he put it, “always perform like this”, I train every day. But it’s completely ridiculous who was selected [for Worlds]. You can try and test [gymnasts] at World Cups, at inivitationals, but not at the World Championships. Next time he decides to test a gymnast at the Olympic Games – where is the oversight for his actions?”
“I do not want to be a part of such actions due to which a B team is sent to the World Championships and funded by the taxpayers money. All the excuses about it being a joint decision of the coaches (my personal coach Lavrukhin had no vote in the team selection process), directives of the management (I don’t think anyone would actually be against much better international competition results of other gymnasts) and all the rest are just made up. My competition results and the results of the guys from the national team are all public at international competitions. Frankly speaking, this level is an order of magnitude higher than that of the 2022 Worlds team.”
“In short, the results-based selection principle on our team has been destroyed by one person. No sport can exist without a real competition. It is clear that if gymnasts will be selected based on [individual] decisions and not competition results, sooner or later, the rest of the gymnasts will not want to be on such teams. The 2022 European Championships did not go well for me but even that performance can objectively strengten our team.”
Pakhniuk also posted a photo of his hand-written resignation notice to the Ukrainian Ministry of Youth and Sports (national team gymnasts are employees of the Ministry) in which he wrote:
“Due to the fact that I was not included on the Ukrainian artistic gymnastics team to compete at the 2022 World Championships (Great Britain, Liverpool), I ask to be voluntarily fired from the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine.”
In responce, Gennady Sartynsky said that unlike Radivilov, Pakhniuk has not been in touch with the team’s coaches and has not provided any updates on his progress. Pakhniuk and Radivilov were originally supposed to go to World Challenge Cup in Paris which would have allowed to see them in competition. However, in the end, both withdrew. Instead, Pakhnkiuk opted to compete for his club at Bundesliga (the first competition of the season was on the same dates as Paris WC). He had decent routines there that would have been very helpful in a team competition but he’s not yet back to the level where he could challenge for event medals at Worlds.
Sartynsky explained to Suspilne why Pakhniuk was not selected for the Worlds team:
“How can I react [to his announcement]? I haven’t seen him for a long time. We were together at the European Championships and I haven’t seen him since. I had not seen them before [Euros] either. What can he want from me? He’s training on his own, I don’t know how. Perhaps, online, with his coach. I invited him to a training camp in October, he should be at the training camp. And I think that he, in order to not leave Italy, found such a way [to miss the camp].”
“You don’t make statements this way. You call the head coach and ask, “why wasn’t I selected for the World Championships?” I told him and his coach to send me videos of his training. I haven’t gotten a single video or a call. How can I select a guy who says he’s working on something for the World Championships [without seeing him]? I know about Radivilov, we are in touch, I know what he’s working on, how many events he’s working on, there are no changes. But here I asked his coach Lavrukhin to show me a video of him training and that was the end of it. At the European Championships, he got 77 points [in the all-around]. We have a junior who, with the same mistakes, got 79 points but a junior has 8 elements [counted towards the D score], while a senior has 10 elements.”
“These World Championships are not an [Olympic] qualifier for us, it is a regular competition. The team is not trying to qualify to the Olympic Games or anything else. The main qualifier for us will happen at the European Championships next year. And now I, as the head coach, need to try out young guys because when a gymnast is 30 years old and he got 85 points in 2019 and 77 points in 2022, you know, there’s a decrease. It’s not his fault, it’s his age’s fault. So, what’s there to complain about? But what he wrote [about me] will stay on his conscience.”
“There is a war going on and many retired from gymnastics. And we have to select the team from a small pool. We used to have 10-12 gymnasts to select five from them, while now we have 5-6. And we are putting all our efforts into the young ones who are growing up and will start competing next year. And we are preparing them for this competition. Everyone understands what can a young gymnast do and what can a 30-year-old do who has not won anything previously.”
Pakhniuk has not explained why he is missing the current national team camp but it could be connected to his competitions in Bundesliga – there are competitions throughout October and the money he earns for competing there is likely an important part of his funding.
