Whitlock aims for sporting immortality
Olympic champion is taking a break – to work on eponymous routines, he tells
Max Whitlock revealed yesterday that he will not return to gymnastic competition until the world championships in September. But that does not mean that the double Olympic gold medallist is lying on a beach or diverting his energy into reality TV shows, like Louis Smith.
Whitlock has locked himself away in his Basildon gym, working with the secrecy and focus of a scientist developing a miracle drug. The goal is to devise a spectacular pommel-horse routine, something that has never been performed – or even imagined – by his rivals. “I want to have a move named after me,” he told
“It’s been a target for a long, long time. I am very close now, and it’s exciting.”
British gymnastics has already bequeathed us ‘The Tweddle’ and ‘The Downie’ – both uneven-bars moves with a high difficulty tariff of 0.60. Within a year, we might be talking about ‘The Whitlock’. There could even be ‘Whitlock One’ and ‘Whitlock Two’ if his most ambitious plans are realised.
“It’s about creating something that shocks people,” Whitlock says. “There are two I am thinking of now. One would be a big, big move. It would probably change the pommel quite a bit if I can do it, but it’s very dangerous at the same time. If I miss with my hand I will land on my face. So I need to make sure it’s right. “The other move, I am hoping to get that one quite soon. If I can do it in a month I’ll be happy. Maybe in two months I’ll be making it a regular thing. There are only two G-level skills at the moment on the pommel horse [which means a difficulty value of 0.70], and I am hoping this would be a third. The other one, the dangerous one, might be the first H [or 0.80] on this apparatus.”
Whitlock’s research-anddevelopment phase is something most elite gymnasts go through after an Olympics. Every four years, the points code is amended to give certain moves a higher or lower value. As a result, routines must be dismantled and recombined in new shapes.
“That’s why I wanted to give myself this time away from competition,” said Whitlock, who is 24 and hopes to compete at two more Olympics. “The floor routine which I show on stage will hopefully have four new tumbles out of five. So that’s another big job and I can’t rush it.”
One problem, when it comes to securing naming rights, is the question of when to unveil the new manoeuvre. You are only credited with a skill when you pull it off at a world championships or an Olympics. So while Whitlock would prefer to run a soft launch at a World Cup meet, that might allow his rivals to steal a march and insert their names in the Code of Points. This explains why cameras and mobiles are banned from South Essex Gymnastics Club when he is testing new tricks.
“I heard of one competition where there were four people trying to do a Tkachev on high bar,” says Whitlock, referring to a skill that was first unveiled in 1977. “It depended what apparatus you started on, who had the chance to do it first. If the order had been different, we would call the Tkachev by a different name.”
Whitlock’s priority is to be able to nail his secret moves without fear of mishap. Yes, he continues to make public appearances, and has promised to perform at the iPro Sport World Cup at the O2 Arena on April 8. But when he returns in earnest, he plans to come back with a bang rather than a crash.
“I’m excited to be there,” said Whitlock of the iPro Sport World Cup, which will be screened on Sky Sports Mix and pits British gymnasts such as Brinn Bevan, Amy Tinkler and Sam Oldham against a field from around the world. “From the start I was involved in it, and I think it will be really interesting to watch.”