Russian men made a steady start in their pursuit for first team medal since 2006 as the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships began in Doha yesterday.
At the Aspire Dome after first day’s qualifications, Russians were sitting pretty atop the leaderboard ahead of the Netherlands and Switzerland. Nikolai Kuksenkov, Artur Dalaloyan, Nikita Nagornyy, David Belyavskiy and Dmitrii Lankin combined for Russia’s total score of 258.402, which should be enough for them to make it to the final as one of the eight qualifiers. Reigning champions Japan will open their campaign today, so will USA, Great Britain and China.
Despite their barren run at the World Championships, Russia won team silver at Rio 2016 and are also reigning European team champions. With only two athletes per country advancing to the individual all-around final, there was fierce competition within the Russian squad.
Nagornyy was the most consistent performer yesterday and led the all-around standings with a total of 87.098, ahead of Dalaloyan who tallied 84.572. Dalaloyan’s fine performances on the parallel bars and the floor saw him finish more than 1.000 ahead of third-placed Belyavskiy.
Nagornyy was happy with the team’s performance, but added there was scope for improvement especially in pommel horse, where both Kuksenkov and Dalaloyan slipped. “It was overall quite good. I made a few mistakes but we will deal with them. I will work on fixing the mistakes in the future. On the pommel horse, we made a few mistakes but they were silly mistakes. Pommel horse is an event where we should be getting a lot of points,” said Nagornyy.
The Netherlands had an overall exceptional performance as a team, finishing with a 245.663 team total to provisionally move into second place behind Russia. Epka Zonderland led his team on both events, scoring a 14.633 on parallel bars and a 14.4 (with a huge 6.2 difficulty score) on Horizontal Bar.
In fact, last year’s World Championships top three – Zonderland, Tin Srbic and Bart Deurloo – in Horizontal Bar eased their way towards the top of the leaderboard yesterday.
Zonderland and Croatia’s Srbic were separated by just one-hundredth of a point, with the former leading. The pair remained on top of the standings for the rest of the day with Dalaloyan in third, just ahead of Deurloo.
“Today I did a safe routine,” Zonderland, the London 2012 Olympic Games champion, said. “If I go to the final, there is no safe way. I wanted to do one more release, but I was so tired. I don’t know why I wasn’t recovered from Parallel Bars.”
Srbic had high praise of Zonderland and said he was just pleased to compete with the Dutchman. “I have been looking at him since I was 10 years old,” said Srbic. “He is maybe the best gymnast on High Bar of all time and I am proud just to be in the same arena competing with him.”
The Croat has had a tough run-up to defending his title. Three months ago he injured his left shoulder and then, while on the comeback trail, he ripped a rib muscle. He is certainly well-placed to once again challenge for a spot on the podium.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s Ahmed al-Dayani was placed 57th, while Mosa Ahmed was lying in 102nd position in the Pommel Horse. It was a below-par performance from the young Qatar gymnasts, who are up against World class gymnasts.
The second and final day of men’s team and individual qualifications will be held from 9am today. The two days of women’s qualifiers will take place tomorrow and on Sunday. Only top eight teams will qualify for the final. The best 24 gymnasts from qualifications will qualify for the All-around final with a maximum of two gymnasts per country.
For the apparatus finals, only eight best gymnasts can make it to the medal round, with a maximum of two gymnasts per country. More than 500 gymnasts from 76 nations are taking part in the World Championship, which is being staged in the Middle East for the first time.
Russia’s Artur Dalaloyan in action during the Rings apparatus at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Doha yesterday. PICTURES: Thajudheen
