Russia’s Nagornyy wins world gymnastics allaround
Nikita Nagornyy of Russia won his first individual world gymnastics title on Friday in Stuttgart, Germany, by more than 1½ points, a year after fellow Russian Artur Dalaloyan needed a tiebreaker to win.
That puts Russia’s men on track for a strong showing at next year’s Olympics, after world team gold on Wednesday and a 12 finish in the allaround for Nagornyy and Dalaloyan two days later.
Nagornyy has a Roman numeral tattoo on his arm marking the date of his team Olympic silver with Russia in 2016, but he’s keen to shut down talk of an upgrade to the gold medal in Tokyo next year.
“We’ve got a lot of work in front of us, we need to train well and properly,” he said. “You can’t talk about it. Our work’s going to do all the talking.”
Coming off a shoulder injury, China’s 2017 world allaround champion Xiao Ruoteng was in the silver medal position after five of the six rotations. However, he came off the high bar and dropped to fourth.
Nagornyy scored 88.772 points to 87.165 for Dalaloyan.
Bronze went to Oleg Verniaiev of Ukraine on 86.973.
Sixtime U.S. allaround champion Sam Mikulak had just made the final as the last qualifier, but he briefly looked a surprise contender for gold. Mikulak led the scoring after three rotations with highscoring routines on the parallel bars, but he later fell on the pommel horse and finished seventh.
He said bouncing back after qualification gave him more confidence ahead of the Olympics.
“Going forward, if I ever have a bad day, I know that I can turn it around right away,” he said. “There’s nothing against performing bad because I know my true potential out there.”