Oleg Verniaiev had a rocky beginning of the season. He underwent surgeries on both legs in the beginning of the year, then went on to compete at the European Championships after very short preparation. Despite far from being at full strength, he competed at the European Games and won three medals there – silvers in the all-around and on pommel horse and gold on parallel bars. Verniaiev had a little competition break in July and focused on recovering but will return to competition next week, competing at the Open Israeli Championships on August 17th.
He told XSport that his recovering is going well despite starting to compete a bit too early:
“Last year, I had surgeries on my shoulder and leg, and this year, I had surgeries on both legs. So, I had four surgeries in two years. There’s still pain, it’s a long process after surgery. Everything takes time, so I’m still recovering after the European Games, I haven’t started the full training load yet. Last year, when I went to a competition in Switzerland, I was stepping out of the bus and twisted my ankle. It was so bad that I couldn’t put weight on the foot for about 15 minutes, but I felt that it was something serious. The medical professionals started helping me, fixing it, taping it, giving me painkillers. I had to compete and when I competed, when I went on vault, I guess, I was thinking about my left leg so hard and protecting it so much, that I didn’t do the vault well, landed badly and hurt my other leg. It all got worse and we later concluded that surgery was required. In one leg, a ligament was torn, and, in another, there was excessive growth on the joint that needed cleaning up. For now, I need to protect body, condition it, recover it and everything will be fine. I’m already working and competing, I just need to spend more time on conditioning. It’s just that I sped up the process a bit more that I should have, so, as usual, there were some complications. But, otherwise, it’s all fine.”
He said again that while he originally did not want to compete at the European Championships, he ultimately agreed with his coach that it was a good decision for him:
“There was a huge war then, I didn’t want to go, I knew that it would be hard to get full routines in five days. I wasn’t training at all, I was resting, eating, doing nothing. I was fighting with the coach, he wanted to put me on the roster right away. Then we decided that I wouldn’t go. And a week or so before the competition, Vlad Hryko got injured, his back started hurting, the doctors told him to lower the training load, and my coach said it’s fate and put me on the roster without asking me. He did it so that I would just travel with the team, but I can’t just travel. So, practically two or three days before we left, I started getting the routines on parallel bars and pommel horse back. It was kind of a state of a terrified person who doesn’t understand anything. I wasn’t exactly stressed, but I didn’t have the muscles or the stamina, my head wasn’t used to all that, and so we got some elements back in two days and left. Generally, I managed to compete well. These isn’t an excuse, it’s a fact – to get into two finals, after training for a week… And in the final, I tried doing my full routines in order to fight for medals, but, obviously, I didn’t have enough strength to do it.”
“I’m always going all out, if I come to a competition, I will fight until the end and do everything to win medals, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do it. But I got back into shape faster, I kind of came back to the righteous path, got back in the gym instead of partying, eating and resting. You know, it was kind of a shock but it allowed me to get back on the path where I need to be. I’ve already restored my routines on pommel horse and bars. High bars and rings aren’t fully back yet because of my shoulder.”
Verniaiev said the rules of European Games where only one person per country could qualify to an event final, mean that he had to do more difficult routines in the qualifications:
“At the European Championships, two people from one country can compete in an event final. In Minsk, it was only one person per country. And the issue for Ukraine, Turkey, Russia was that we have two strong gymnasts on each event and on each, one of them is out of the final because of the rules. So, some weaker gymnasts got into the finals because of that. For example, in the qualification, Petya and I needed to compete harder with each other in order to make the final than we competed in the finals when we fought for medals. In qualification, we normally don’t do our full difficulty because we know what is enough to make the final, but here we had to go all out.”
Verniaiev is known for competing a lot and he confirmed that only the injuries are stopping him from going to all the competitions:
“First, I thought about skipping the European Games because I need to prepare for Worlds, but then I decided – ok, I qualified, let’s go. I just had such thoughts because of the injuries and I wanted to prepare for Worlds a bit better. But if I felt fine, I wouldn’t even give it a second thought, I’d go to all the competitions that exist, like I did in my better years.”
Verniaiev really liked the invested and supportive crowd in Minsk:
“The crowd was warm, there were a lot of people, they were active, they were shouting. For example, here, when people come to the Palace of Sports to watch a competition, they just sit there disinterested, there’s no fun in such a crowd. It was especially memorable when we competed on pommel horse and Andrey Likhovitskiy from Belarus was on the apparatus. He does the first element, everyone goes “aaaah”, second element – “aaaaaaaaaah”, they keep winding up and on the third or fourth element, the whole arena is buzzing and the buzz continues until the end of the routine. I got goosebumps watching all that, it was just amazing. This is the kind of crowd for which you want to compete.”
“What do we need to get such crowd here? To organize competitions properly. To organize competitions, to hire an announcer that wouldn’t be four times older than me and who would, instead of just naming the gymnasts, do some contests, give prizes, t-shirts, work with the crowd.”
Photo: Ukrainian Olympic Committee
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