Andrey Medvedev, the silver medalist on vault at this year’s European Championships, had bing plans for the Worlds. He upgraded his vault for Euros and planned to upgrade his second vault and have two vaults with 6.0 difficulty. However, a month ago he broke his foot arch. For Medvedev, it’s not the first time the injury comes at the worst moment: in 2017, he got injured shortly before Worlds and in 2018, he broke his elbow on vault at Worlds. He decided to still try to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics at Worlds and to compete only on vault. However, downgrading and form issues resulted in a score of 14.116 which is unlikely to be enough for the vault final. While he generally does not train other events, he was unexpectedly listed on floor today and did a very simple routine. Turns out, he was trying to help his teammates, Alexander Shatilov and Artem Dolgopyat in order to ensure they qualify to the Olympics.
Dolgopyat and Shatilov were supposed to go last on high bar and then first on floor in the next rotation. As both do not compete all-around much, it was already challenging for them to do floor as their fourth event. To do it right after going on high bar could potentially result in either or both not making it to Tokyo. Medvedev said the coaches asked him to do a floor routine – whatever he could – to buy his teammates some time. And he delivered. Shatilov said they both were extremely grateful to Medvedev:
“That was a truly heroic action, despite his injured feet, despite the pain… The coaches asked him to do any kind of routine in order to give us some rest because according to the starting order we were supposed to go first and second. Because he did the floor routine, despite the injury and the pain, we were actually able to rest a bit before our routines. He sacrificed himself for the good of the team.”
After Dolgopyat’s fall on high bar, Shatilov ended up placing higher in the all-around and with the score of 81.507, he is quite likely to qualify to Tokyo. Dolgopyat, meanwhile, is currently ranked first on floor and is practically guaranteed a spot in the final. For Shatilov, this will be the fourth Olympics:
“Generally, I am happy with the competition. Despite competing in the first subdivision, we managed to have a successful competition. I did all-around without any major mistakes. Artem did a brilliant floor routine. We hope, we’re pretty sure he’ll be in the floor final. And we’ll wait patiently, tomorrow we’ll know the final results.”
“We had good preparation. Of course, that’s not my maximum, but I wanted to compete in the all-around without mistakes and that’s what I did. The big goal was to qualify to the Olympics through the all-around and, of course, to do a good floor routine. We decided not to do a very difficult routine on floor in order to for a more secure one. If I’ll qualify to the Olympics, I will be upgrading on floor, I’ll specifically focus on this event.”
Shatilov’s two-year-old son is a frequent feature in his gym photos, already trying doing a bit of gymnastics. Shatilov thinks his son has talent but not sure if he’ll end up doing gymnastics:
“I’m not looking this far ahead. I’m taking him to the gym, he likes playing around and spending time with me and the rest of the guys. He enjoys it immensely. In addition, this helps his physical development. I don’t know if he’ll be a gymnast or not. I think he’ll decide when he grows up a bit. But, I think, he has the talent.”
Dolgopyat can potentially qualify to Tokyo through the World Cups series, as he already has two wins and only needs one more to get the coveted 90 points. However, he prefers to be done with the qualification as soon as possible. For him, Tokyo will be the first Olympics but not the last, he hopes to continue until Paris. He says the podium training was quite difficult but he had some time to rest before the competition:
“Our preparation went well, we worked very hard, doing two full routines at a time. After the podium training, it was very hard, and the podium training itself was very hard, I could barely move. But we had some rest afterward and today, I came in very good shape.”
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