Oleg Verniaiev gave a really long interview to xSport.ua talking about the recovery from his surgeries, the past season, his goals for 2019 and 2020 and the future of Ukrainian gymnastics.
Q: In short, what do you think about the past season?
A: The coach and I are happy, we got a medal at Worlds. Right now the main goal is to recover my legs and my shoulders properly so that they would be in the working condition. The coach gave me some time to rest and I’ve been on vacation since December 20th. Overall, we’re happy with the results, we did everything as planned: won at the World Cup, got a medal at Worlds. Everything’s fine.
Q: What was your reaction when you learned that you had to have two surgeries?
A: I knew about the possibility of a leg surgery already in 2014. I had an issue with my left ankle. Then I went to a doctor in Kiev and he said that everything was fine, there was no reason to even think about it or to do an arthroscopy. But I gave those MRI results to the president of my club in Germany and he gave it to a doctor. The doctor looked at it and said that I had a torn ligament and a mass of blood and liquid there and I needed surgery.
I had two options. Either to do a proper surgery and then I’d have to wait five-six months until I could start training again. So, basically, I’d need a year to recover. Or, he said, he could make a couple of cuts and clean this up, that would help. The doctor warned that I’d still be in pain but the pain would stay the same. If I hit it, it would start hurting more, if I tried to preserve it, it would hurt less. But I’m used to my legs hurting. So, if I could keep working, it was ok. So, that’s how I learned about the leg injury. We decided that there was too little time and if I had surgery, the whole preparations for Rio would go down the drain. So, we decided to just clean it up and keep working. So, I started tumbling and running in 1.5 months, it’s really fast, it’s nothing.
I suspect my shoulder got injured at the 2012 Olympics. Sometimes it
But then at some point in 2017, it started hurting on everything, even while tumbling. I didn’t like it. I told the coach that I would do an MRI after the World Championships because I couldn’t tolerate the pain anymore, I couldn’t train, couldn’t prepare for Worlds properly. In the end, I did an MRI, I went to Germany and the doctor said that I had a torn ligament and needed surgery. He said it was 50% torn and if it got completely torn, it would be worse. He said that it wouldn’t start hurting more as it was but it could get torn at any moment, in a year or in a day. So, we decided to finish the season and get surgery. Then I talked to my physical therapist from Israel, he said that having two surgeries would be too hard and I’d have a long recovery. That is, if I got surgery on both my leg and my shoulder, I wouldn’t be able to train at all. Usually, when you have surgery on your upper body, you can condition your legs. When you get surgery on your legs, you can, basically, do almost anything, just carefully, you can keep in shape, and so when you recover, you’ll be in more or less decent shape. But I was out of training for five months, I couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything. But we decided to do it this way because while in Israel I was offered to get surgery only on the shoulder, the doctor in Germany said he could also operate on my leg. We decided to risk it in order not to lose any time. If we only did one procedure first and then the second
Q: According to you, Gennady Lyudvigovich said that if you didn’t return at these Worlds, you wouldn’t return at all. Was that just a saying?
A: No, it wasn’t just a saying. It’s still hard for me to start training. I got unused to it, I didn’t do anything for five months, I went out, had fun, didn’t do gymnastics, I needed to get a break from it. But now it’s hard for me to get back into the routine training. I even prepared for Worlds more according to my mood, whether I would be on fire or I would bail. It’s still hard to get into the consistent training process. I can’t make myself to get into it. If I didn’t come back at Worlds, if I didn’t have this critical moment for which I needed to prepare, my health would be exactly the same but I just wouldn’t be doing all-around.
Q: Is the idea of retiring scary for you or is it inescapable reality?
A: The only thing that makes me sad about a possibility of retirement is that I really like competing. I like the emotions, the public, the adrenalin. This would be sad to let go. It’s great and cool. The rest is… so-so.
Q: Your comeback happened in Bundesliga. Was that the best way to come back considering how much you like this competition and the fact that it’s a more entertaining format.
A: Frankly, if a person is ready, it doesn’t matter where to compete. I wasn’t even nervous when I competed at a World Cup. The only thing I worried about was my pommel horse routine. With the rest of the events, I was completely calm, this even surprised me. Of course, officially, Bundesliga isn’t as serious but it’s serious for me because if I’ll compete badly, why will the team need me? But yes, it’s more of a light comeback.
Q: What’s better – to compete in the main final of Bundesliga and lose or to compete in the bronze final and win?
A: It’s better to win. I’ve been in this club for five years and we kept losing in the finals, we couldn’t win even once. Sometimes we made mistakes, sometimes the other team was strong. We won for the first time this year. It’s better than losing.
Q: Club competitions are cool. Do you think something like this is possible in Ukraine?
A: No, that’s not realistic. It’s a lot of financial investment and I think we don’t have enough athletes to hold club competitions. In Germany, each club has at least 10 people while we have only 15 people on the national team. And the arenas are needed. We can’t compete at the training gym in Koncha-Zaspa. So, it means we need to rent the Palace of Sports. Have you seen the rent prices for one day there? It’s huge money.
Q: Can you imagine a gymnastics TV show in Ukraine? Kind of like Splash!
A: I don’t think so, it would probably be too dangerous. It’s not realistic for an unprepared person to just come and start doing something. We spend years training. Although, I think it would be interesting for people to watch. Gymnastics is a top sport in terms of popularity but it’s also a top sport in terms of injuries. I think it would be interesting but, I guess, not everyone would agree to it.
Q: You won four medals at the World Cup in Hungary, one of them gold. Did you need to compete at a more serious competition than Bundesliga before the World Championships?
A: Yes, that’s why we went there. I needed to compete, to have a test run, to try things out and look how they work. In other words, to shake off the dust and to feel the competition. We had another month till the World Championships, there were more World Cups but Gennady Lyudvigovich and I decided not to sign up for them. I just needed to compete once, to see what I had and what I didn’t have and to go from there. If everything was bad, we’d prepare just one or two events. If everything was relatively good, we could prepare something else as well. That is, in the last month we needed to understand in which direction to move in order not to spread our attention and to just focus on bars and pommels and to fight for medals. I did everything from scratch.
Q: Can you explain the difference between an Apparatus World Cup and a World Challenge Cup?
A: There’s difference now. A World Challenge Cup is just a competition. World Cups – the one in Cottbus and the ones in Melbourne, Baku and Doha in 2019 – are qualifiers for the Olympic Games. There are eight World Cups and they have a qualification table for each event. Only one gymnast that wins the whole World Cup series on an event will qualify to the Olympics. Actually, this current qualification system for the Olympic Games is co complicated that not everyone completely understands how it works.
We’re building a team of all-arounders, so Igor Radivilov can’t be on the team. In order to qualify to the Olympics, he needs to win an event at the World Cup Series and he’s working on it now. He has already won the first competition but it’s better to win three or four more so that no one will surpass him for sure. He has to qualify. But, as it was explained to us, if he’ll go to Worlds in 2019, compete for the team and the team will qualify, he won’t be able to get an individual spot. The people on the team will have to compete for the team. So he’ll have to miss the World Championships in order to go to the Olympics. It’s just that we want to build a team that could make the final and we need only all-arounders because all four do all the events. They made these selection procedures so complicated.
Q: Does FIG pay prize money for World Cups?
A: Yes, but it’s 700 euros for the first place, it’s not such a huge amount of money, really.
Q: And does our Ministry of Sports pay for the flights?
A: Since I am a Worlds medalist, FIG pays for my accommodation and food and the Ministry pays for the flights. For the rest of the guys, the Ministry pays for the whole trip.
Q: How prestigious is it to win the overall ranking at the World Cup series?
A: I’ve never won one, I’ve never had this goal and I’ve always lack just a bit for the victory. It’s just that out of the 8 competitions I go to two-three-four, I lose at one, win at two and I’m always either second or third. I didn’t have such a goal to win the whole series, but it’s different now. It’s not just prestigious now, it’s necessary.
Q: Mykhailo Romanchuk said that for him World Cups used to be the goal but now they’re just stages in his preparation. And what do you think of World Cups?
A: Yes, times passes, we are changing, we mature, get experiences, our priorities change. You see, when you win a medal at the World Championships, a World Cup is… Well, it also depends on what type of World Cup it is, they can be different. For example, when Petya won bars in Hungary, he got 14.950, and it’s hard to get into the final at Worlds with such a score. On the other hand, when I went to Cottbus in 2016, 15.400 was the fourth place there. In the new rules that would be about 14.900. So, it all depends on who competes there. Sometimes, a couple of Chinese gymnasts come and a couple of Japanese gymnasts and the level of competition is so high. But sometimes no one comes.
Q: You didn’t attend the European Championships. What do you think about it as a spectator?
A: It’s hard to say. Some guys competed for the team for the first time. Generally, if I’m being harsh and critical, the team competition was a failure. Igor did his job and won a medal. But the team was a failure, there were many falls and many mistakes. But, as they say, this is a matter of experience, it’s ok. We watched, we understood what was going on and now we’re working on it.
Q: What is international gymnastics lacking?
A: Right now, FIG keeps creating rules that are worse and worse for the gymnasts and better and better for the TV. They keep thinking of something to attract more spectators, to make them pay for the tickets but when you have to compete all-around for four days, that’s not normal. The rest is fine, though.
Q: What would you like to change in gymnastics in Ukraine?
A: We have to find sponsors or a person who loves gymnastics and will really work on developing it. You know, they say that the federation president doesn’t have to be a millionaire or a businessman, he just needs to know how to get money. If he will be able to get the sponsors and everything will be fine, he’ll be a golden president. He needs to find sponsors and equipment, to build gyms, to improve everything. We will show it on social media and people will think: “Well, there is future in this sport, we need to send our kid there because it’s not only football where you can earn money, you can live off gymnastics, too”. Because right now everyone sees that the gyms are shitty, or there are no gyms, the equipment is breaking down, everything’s sad. I wouldn’t send my kid to gymnastics if I saw that. So, it’s all pretty grim right now.
Q: Would you like to work in sports administration later?
A: We’ll see, only time will tell. I’m not against it, but I’d need to do something, to try, to invent something. So, we’ll see. I’d need a really strong team in order to move in that direction.
Q: Can you tell about the Telegram channel @UkrainianGymnastics? How did you start it, what is the goal?
A: I started it a long time ago, about three years ago. We used to have a group on Vkontakte but then Vkontakte got blocked and there was nothing else. So, I created a group so all the fans could go there. For example, you can’t find a live stream of competition, I’m also not good at finding such things, but there’s one person on the group who knows everything and understands gymnastics better than us. He used to write all of that to me in private messages and I posted it in my Instagram stories and then 50 more people asked me where’s the stream etc. So, I created a group so that it would organize all the information. And people joined it because, perhaps, many want to ask the gymnasts something. There’s lots of stuff there, who needs something will get it and who doesn’t need it will scroll through. That’s why the group was created.
Q: You won silver at Worlds and, it turns out, you have been winning medals at every big competition of the year since 2014. How do people react to it and what does it mean?
A: It’s good for us, my coach and I are happy, it means that we’re doing everything right and we’re moving in the right direction. In Ukraine, I guess, everyone’s already used to it. There were some situations that weren’t nice. For example, we come home, we won two-three gold medals and the news just say: “The gymnast competed at an international competition and won two gold medals”. But some other athlete comes back from a World Cup and they write: “Wow! This sport won a bronze!”. I’m looking at it and wondering: “But we won five medals three days ago, two of them gold, why [don’t we get the same coverage]?” That is, people are so used to our medals that this is what happens. But when we don’t win, they say: “That’s it, a shitty performance, a failure”. But this is a sport. There are 500 participants at the competition and you have to win. We understand the price of a medal but many don’t know it.
Q: After the World Championships, there was an article on one website criticising you and saying that you failed. How do you react to such sort of criticism?
A: This is not criticism. If we did something bad, if we did some sort of a boycott, that would be criticism. But if a person went there and wasn’t able to win a medal even though he’s a Worlds finalist and one of the eight best gymnasts in the world – you can’t criticize him. If someone doesn’t like it – come to the gym, I’ll give you 18 years (that’s how long I’ve been training) and you can try winning at least one medal at the Ukrainian Championships. So, it’s not a criticism, it’s just a wrong attitude. I expressed my opinion on that matter, I talked to this person, he apologized, explained, I also explained my opinion to him and we now understand each other. But you can’t do that. If you don’t like something – stay silent, you can’t shit on your own athletes. You have to support them no matter the results. Victory, failure – doesn’t matter. Otherwise, don’t approach us and don’t write to us. Either the fans should be normal or they’re not fans. How can you talk shit about the person who didn’t win at a competition? Well, you can say: “It’s a pity that you couldn’t do it, but it’s ok, you’ll keep working and you’ll do it the next time”. But to say: “Oh, you were completely shitty there!” – that’s nonsense. I can also come to them and say: “Well, why don’t you come to our competitions?” You can invent anything and I also can say anything on the matter, so it’s all wrong.
Q: You won three silvers at Worlds in a row. Are you happy with them or was it upsetting not to win gold?
A: Of course, we’re striving for the better but it’s a sport. You see how new people are coming, everyone’s improving, everyone’s upgrading, it’s hard to win all the time. But we’re working and trying. It’s different every time. In 2015, the judging was a bit unfavorable to me. I made a mistake on the landing and the Chinese did his routine with mistakes but he won with a tiny advantage. Then, in 2017, I didn’t really train, but on the last day I got myself together and did the best routine I could. I wasn’t ready, I couldn’t train, I was bored, my shoulder hurt. And in 2018, I was just after surgery. So, that’s how it was. But again, no one cares about it, only I understand how it was. But the most important thing is that we have the medals. Since the end of 2013, we haven’t left any competition without medals. That’s your answer.
Q: After the 2017 Worlds, you said that that competition was the hardest in your career. Doha trumped Montreal in difficulty?
A: Yes, of course. In 2017, it was hard because I was exhausted, I was bored, I had no motivation, it was hard in that aspect. Doha became hard both mentally and physically. In this sense, this was the hardest competition in my career, I guess. That is, while it was hard at the Olympics, we just kept working, but here it was hard, painful and uncomfortable.
Q: Did you also go to Worlds because you were afraid that the team could miss the top-24 and not to qualify to the Tokyo Olympics despite having good chances in Tokyo.
A: Yes, of course, I had such thought. The Euros showed this. Here, I didn’t compete great but the general mood improved anyway. I don’t like to praise myself but that’s why my coach and I worked hard, we needed to qualify. If I missed the competition, got injured, couldn’t do something, fell or got an extremely low score, what would I say
Q: It seems that in Ukraine, an athlete can only earn enough money after winning a medal at the Olympics. Are you trying to help the guys to win a medal so they could also get some financial gains from gymnastics?
A: Everyone wants to get something but here most people’s goal is to win medals, and money is just a bonus. We’re idealists. We just need to do it finally. We’re fed up with being firth, eight or tenth. We just want to win a medal and whatever happens afterward happens.
Q: Aren’t you afraid to talk about such a goal? Then people can say: you promised to bring a medal and didn’t.
A: What or who should I be afraid of? When Yatsenyuk was the prime minister in 2015, he visited our gym. We failed at Worlds then and he said: “Well, guys, will you go to the Olympics?” I replied: “If you buy us the equipment, I guarantee you that we will, but if you don’t buy it, don’t ask us about it”. So he said: “It’s the top priority now”. Then the National Olympic Committee bought us the new floor and the Ministry later bought the equipment. If we had conditions like in Russia, USA, Japan or China, they the demands would be different, but for now – sorry. Especially, since I’m not promising anything, I’m saying this is our goal. We’re striving towards it and working on it. So, I’m not afraid. I’m not saying we will be third. I’m saying we will do everything to become third.
Q: Will we see, perhaps, not Worlds or Euros, but at least a World Cup in Ukraine in the near future?
A: No. We don’t have the arenas. For a World Cup, you have to have a large arena. The Palace of Sports has such an arena for competitions but there’s no training gym nearby. So, it’s not realistic. Unfortunately, my dream of competing at some large competition in Ukraine will not come true, I will retire before that happens.
Q: You said that you don’t care about the status of an Olympic champion. Were you able to ignore the pressure this status gives?
A: This pressure depends only on you. If you will allow to pressure you, it will exist, but if you will behave normally, nothing will happen. You won, ok. Sometimes, some old Olympians visit and we often tell them: “Your time was in the 80s and now it’s our time”. So, it’s the same for us. It’s our time now but it won’t be our time in five years. I just don’t want to be like some people who scream that they put the whole world on their knees. As an active athlete, it’s not nice to hear that someone was the best and we’re all beneath them. I don’t want to be like that, I want to be a normal person.
Q: How do you see your perfect team for the 2020 Olympics?
A: We have five all-arounders: me, Petya Pakhniuk, Zhenya Yudenkov (he had shoulder surgery right after me, he’s recovering now and is already training), Vlad Hryko and the young Nazar Chepurnoy. I don’t know what age is Iliya Kovtun, whether he will be eligible for the Games because he would need to be 18. Out of these five, four should make the team and one will be left out. Then, Igor Radivilov has to qualify individually as the fifth gymnast. And there’s also a possibility to get the sixth spot for the all-arounders. We will have four World Cups in 2019 and the top-2 countries will get another individual spot. If I will be in good shape, I’ll go to these Cups in order to get a license.
Q: Petro Pakhniuk is probably the most unique person in the Ukrainian sport. How did you react to his comeback in 2017?
A: Unique is not the right word. We helped him to get back. But it’s not really right. Not that it’s wrong to leave, it’s wrong to come back. If you left, great, good riddance, we said goodbyes, we stay in touch and that’s it. It’s a personal matter, I’m not judging anyone. But coming back is controversial, not everyone can do that. But Petya came back, he could potentially strengthen the team, we needed him. So everyone made an effort so that he would be taken back.
Q: As I understand, Oleg Stepko has a more complicated situation and he didn’t want to come back?
A: I don’t know the details. He’s a more closed person in that sense. It’s just that people helped him in Russia and he went there. But the competition is different there, he can’t make the team.
Q: In the media, there’s Oleg Verniaiev in gymnastics and then there’s the rest. What do you think about it?
A: Well, today people know me, tomorrow they won’t. When there are medals, they know you, when there aren’t medals, they don’t, everything depends just on this. If you want to be known, win medals and people will start recognising you, it’s that simple.
Q: What are you goals as an athlete for 2019?
A: Work-work-work, to work a lot. To recover my shoulder, to condition, to learn new elements, to keep working. In short, I have lots of plans, lots of goals, I need to upgrade. Lots of work, too little time. It’s bad, but it’s good. I have to upgrade on everything for the all-around. Everyone caught up with me while I was resting, time doesn’t stand still. I don’t become younger, so I need to seize the opportunities while I have them.
Q: What is your dream for 2019 as a regular person?
A: What can I say, let this mess in our country, this war, stop. Let everything get better. It’s not important how. I don’t care, the most important thing is for everything to stop and to become normal like it was before. It was a great beautiful country, everything was great, and not like now when things are wrong.
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he is so direct and honest like aliya on interviews which is very rare from people in general much less athletes this days , thanks for the note
Really insightful interview with Oleg. He’s such a straight talker. Thanks for translating 🙂