‘I thought my career was over – I had to learn to walk again’
Giarnni Regini-moran on his battle to return to the top in gymnastics after devastating injury
Giarnni Regini-moran was just 17 and already a multiple Youth Olympic and European Junior champion when his gymnastics career turned in literally a split-second from the brink of the Olympic Games to the prospect of retirement.
The year was 2016 and Reginimoran had been invited to Team GB’S Olympic trials in Lilleshall when, after a morning spent fine-tuning his routines, he was working on some new skills on the high bars that he eventually hoped to incorporate into his routine. “It was one where, if I got it, I would put it in my routine if I went to the Olympics,” he says.
He describes the particular skill as a “release and catch, where I do a double backflip over with a full turn and then grab the bar again”.
And what happened? “On this one go I really committed. As
I went to grab the bar, one of the hands missed. The amount of force I hit the ground with caused my knee to bend sideways and back. I snapped my posterior cruciate ligament completely. It was not attached any more. I did the medial collateral ligament. It was literally just hanging in there. A grade two plus. I strained my anterior cruciate ligament. There was a grade two tear in my hamstring and I fractured the top of my tibia. My shin bone was sagging to the floor.”
Any chance of the next Olympics was instantly gone and, having been administered gas and air before being carried out on a stretcher, Regini-moran was in his bedroom when a coach explained the full brutal results of his scan. “At that point, I really thought that my career was over,” he says. “I was expecting maybe one ligament to be gone. At that time, I was the best junior in Europe and one of the best in the world. I went from the top to rock bottom. I had to learn to walk again. It was crazy.”
Fast-forward three years and, while the scars that surround his knee serve as a permanent reminder, the happy news is that Regini-moran, now 21, has progressed to the stage where he is in the British men’s team who will today compete in the World Championships final in Stuttgart. The team have also this week secured qualification for next year’s Olympics.
Regini-moran is understandably emotional when he thinks back over a three-year journey during which the challenge has been as much psychological as physical. He identifies two big early turning points. The first was still to be taken to Rio de Janeiro as part of the “Ambition Programme” that gives a small selection of emerging athletes a chance to see the Olympics from the inside. “It had been one of the lowest points of my life but I was in Rio, watching the gymnastics and I just thought, ‘This is my dream right here’. It was the fuel for the fire again.”
Before his posterior cruciate ligament surgery in October 2016, Regini-moran took the extraordinary decision to go back on the high bars – albeit above a foam pit – and try to execute the skill he had injured himself attempting.
“It was at a stage where I had no PCL in my leg,” he says. “I had a big fear and they say that if you get knocked down, you get up and do it again. I thought ‘I need to do one and catch it, just to say I have done it’. Even if I never want to compete again, I would be able to say I’ve done it. What more could I have done to my knee anyway?”
He duly completed the skill, underwent surgery and then began a painstaking two-year process of recovery. “Physically, there is a lot involved, but the mental side is horrible,” he says. “The surgeon said that I would be fine after a year but perfect after two years. Nothing has ever been so true.
“It’s been the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with. Getting back on again, doing landings and facing forwards, I initially felt like my knee would go.
“But if you are cautious and scared in gymnastics it is going to cause injuries. I still get occasional numbness but the main thing is being clear in your head that it is fine.”
One crucial aspect was the work that he did with the team’s psychologist.
“We did a timeline,” he says. “I would write down what was happening and my feelings. Initially I wasn’t sleeping. You would then do the same two weeks later and see small differences. You can feel like you are not getting anywhere but she was, ‘Look, now you are sleeping. That’s progress’. Then it might be, ‘One month ago you were walking, now you are running’.
“She made me see little positives and break down the process to make the bigger picture and realise, step by step, everything will come.
“That was important and look now. My body is good, I’ve never been to a World Championships before and the Olympics is still my dream.”
‘I had a big fear. Physically, there is a lot involved but the mental side is horrible’