Nobody knows the routine from here better than Rhys McClenaghan.
The balancing of nerves and ambition over the coming days and nights, before he returns to the Arena Bercy next Saturday to deliver another pommel horse routine that he now firmly believes can win him the Olympic gold medal.
“I’m at the top of the mountain now, and I’m just enjoying the view,” he said just before exiting here on Saturday, after confidently qualifying for the eight-man final ranked number one with his score of 15.200.
With that McClenaghan very much keeps alive his Olympic dream of going where no Irish gymnast has gone before. After winning back-to-back world titles last year in this most testing men’s apparatus, where anything can and often does go wrong, his flawless performance on Saturday night also reinforces his belief of what is possible now.
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“I want to be pushing more and more, perfection isn’t attainable but we’ll try,” he said. His difficulty score was a relatively low 6.300, but his execution score of 8.900 was magnificent, as the Co Down athlete played things safe but also sure. One wrong move and that dream was over.
There was some pressure to make the final. Stephen Nedoroscik from the US, the 2021 World Champion, had also scored 15.200 earlier, with Britain’s Max Whitlock scoring 15.166 as he seeks to become the first gymnast to win three pommel horse Olympic gold medals in a row.
McClenaghan’s execution score of 8.900 was superior, which earned him the top rank, and he’ll go sixth of the eight finalists next Saturday (from 4.16pm Irish time).
“It is different,” he said of his planned final routine. “I can upgrade, and I plan to upgrade so hopefully we will be seeing that score bumped up even further. I don’t know what score it will take to win, and I don’t care, as I have my job to do and I am hopefully going to do it.”
Last Sunday he celebrated his 25th birthday inside the Athletes Village and will stay there over the coming days, all part of his familiar routine.
“It’s normal, this competition format is the exact same as I do at Worlds, every year, so it’s just doing that again. I’ll get to come down and see some other finals, and enjoy being here.
“But every single day I go into training I am treating it like a competition. So every day I am nervous, I am putting pressure on myself to perform a routine even though it’s just in front of my coach in an empty gym.”
His hopes of making the Olympic podium in Tokyo ended after 10 seconds when he fell chest-first on to the horse and ended up seventh in the final. The 25-year-old has grown in nothing but confidence since. All that was on display here, an utterly flawless 45-second routine that was in the end perfectly done under the circumstances.
He was adamant no thoughts of Tokyo even entered his mind here.
“No, I’ve done a lot of competitions in between. That just kind of shows how I can bounce back from disappointments. I’m just enjoying being here, a two-time Olympian, a two-time Olympic finalist.”
So, seven years after announcing his arrival at age 18, beating Whitlock to win gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, he’ll look to add to his eight championship medals in all (two World Championship gold and one bronze, three European gold, plus Commonwealth Games gold and silver) and there’s no disguising his desire now to win the only one missing.
Five finalists in all scored over 15.000, Whitlock followed by Japan’s Takaaki Sugino (15:033), Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev (15.033), and Kazakhstan’s Nariman Kurbanov (15:000). Korea’s Woong Hur (14.900), and Dutch gymnast Loran de Munck (14.760) are also in the mix.
For now at least McClenaghan has them all exactly where he wants them. Needing to raise their routine again in order to beat him.
