The number-one ranked gymnast just wants to ‘land on top of the podium’
Olympics Day 8 live updates: Rhys McClenaghan goes for gold as Daniel Wiffen sets gold standard in heats
Well, he didn’t win an Olympic medal in Tokyo but as a two-time World Champion coming into Paris, McClenaghan is the man to beat. Even after his impressive qualification at the top of a 65-strong field, McClenaghan and Carson had not decided what routine they would use in the final. Those in the know say the pommel closely relates to the balance beam in women’s gymnastics because there remains a fearful sense the athletes might not make it through to the end of the routine – as McClenaghan painfully demonstrated three years ago before he was 10 seconds in. Completion is the first rung on the ladder of success.
It is a risk/reward settlement McClenaghan will agree with himself and his team as well as an expression of self-belief. To set the routine at a dizzy Olympic gold medal-winning level of difficulty is not within the ability of every athlete. For McClenaghan it is. Saturday’s final performance will not be the same as the one that got him to the Bercy Arena.
It would be remiss to believe he has a straight run to the podium. In Tokyo the title went to an opponent he knows well, Great Britain’s Max Whitlock, a three-time Olympic champion, who has won the Olympic title once in the floor routine and twice on the pommel. In Tokyo Whitlock became the first man in more than 40 years to defend a pommel horse gold medal.
He is where he has always wanted to be, from when he travelled to London 12 years ago to watch the pommel competition as a teenage fan. He told the BBC about how he deeply admired how British silver medal winner Louis Smith performed under the weight of his home crowd.
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