Oleg Verniaiev had surgeries on both ankles less than two months ago. Yet, he returned to competition this weekend, after only a week of training. Verniaiev competed on parallel bars (where he did an actual dismount) and pommel horse and made finals on both events. It is not clear why Verniaiev would need to compete so soon after his surgery, especially since the main competition for the Ukrainian team – the World Championships – is still quite a long time ahead. Neither Verniaiev nor his coach explained such a rushed comeback but, judging by Verniaiev’s post on Instagram, his return was sudden and not completely his own choice. He wrote:
“My first competition after another round of surgeries! Everything happened absolutely spontaneously and while I was totally unprepared, I got scheduled to compete at this competition! But I’m really happy that I CAME BACK”
Verniaiev finished fourth on both events in the finals.
Gennady Sartynsky, the head coach of the national team and Verniaiev’s personal coach, talked to iSport.ua about the competition.
A: The competition in Kyev is a stage of the preparation for the World Championships. A test. We are looking at how our young guys are managing the competition here, then we’ll look at them at the European Championships, and from there, we’ll be building the team for the World Championships. The goal for the Ukraine International Cup was to look at the young ones. Hryko, Yudenkov, and Radivilov are not competing here, while Pakhniuk and Verniaiev are doing two events.
Q: For Oleg Verniaiev, it’s a comeback from an injury…
A: Basically, Verniaiev is starting from scratch. He’s been fully training for only seven days and we put him on two events – pommel horse and parallel bars. It’s his first competition after the surgery. We’ll see.
Q: The European Championships are ahead of us and the second year in a row we will compete without Oleg Verniaiev.
A: As I said, we’ll look at the young guys, what they can do. We have Igor Radivilov who can fight for a medal on rings or vault, Petya Pakhniuk can win a medal on an event.
Q: The European Championships will be the selection for the European Games.
A: We didn’t qualify to the European Games as a team – for that, we needed to make the top-5 at the past European Championships, but we weren’t able to do this without Verniaiev. Now, at the upcoming European Championships, we can only qualify two spots. For that, we need to make the top-3 on an event or in the all-around. As I said, it could be Radivilov or Pakhniuk on events or Pakhniuk in the all-around.*
Q: The main goal is the World Championships where the teams will be able to qualify to the Olympics. As I understand, Igor Radivilov is trying to qualify separately, via World Cups.
A: Yes. There are eight World Cups and, according to three best results, a winner of the nominative spot for Tokyo is decided on each event. Igor won vault two times, the Korean gymnast has the same number of victories. If both will have three victories, the winner will be decided according to the scores. A lot will be clear after the World Championships on which we are putting emphasis. It’s the main competition of the season. The medalists there will get Olympic spots right away.
*Sartynsky seems a bit confused about the qualification rules. There is no team competition at the European Games but the teams that placed in the top-6 at the 2018 European championships each qualified two non-nominative spots for the Games. A country can earn a maximum of three spots for WAG or MAG altogether, no matter whether they placed in the top-6 in 2018 or not. 18 top all-arounders not from the countries that qualified two non-nominative spots can earn a nominative spot for themselves and the same goes for three top spots in the event finals. Thus, Ukraine potentially can qualify three MAG spots for the European Games but they will be nominative. Thus, if Verniaiev does not participate in the European Championships, he will not be able to go to European Games either.
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