“We give everything for the team” – that’s the previously issued motto of head coach Valeri Belenki for this year’s European Gymnastics Championships. Understandable, because it is the team result after qualifying for this championship that ultimately decides on participation in the Olympic Games in Paris 2024. Only the best 13 European teams are allowed to compete in the Olympic qualification in autumn.
“Super performance”, “super proud”, “nice competition”, “mega team effort” – these were the unanimous comments after a good, almost flawless performance, which after three rounds and a total of a good ten hours of competition meant a very good fifth place. Once again it was 32-year-old Andreas Toba who drove the younger generation into the competition, contributed to the result with five flawless performances and then analyzed it critically: “It could have been worse. I would say that was a rock solid performance from all of us. There is still upside potential.”
“Super performance delivered”
In order to exploit this, half the team will have to recover from injuries in the coming months: Toba did not start on the ground in Antalya due to Achilles tendon problems. Nils Dunkel recently had to take a break due to back problems. Nick Klessing, who had to sit out the entire past year due to shoulder problems, says he is neither “one hundred percent fit” nor “one hundred percent pain-free”, but at least he can train again: “It’s no longer the case that I don’t have a cup from above anymore can get out of the closet”. Lukas Dauser, who won silver on parallel bars in Tokyo in 2020, also had to do without the European Championships completely due to a shoulder injury.
It’s not entirely clear whether the head coach is bothered by all these problems, in any case he doesn’t talk about them. After the competition in Antalya, Valeri Belenki said what he has said after almost every competition so far: “A big compliment to the team, the boys did a great job, and also to the coaches.” How he assesses his own performance this time would? He understands the allusion immediately: At the previous World Championships he had forgotten to fix the parallel bars in the competition, most recently in Stuttgart in the mixed competition for the men there was still the much softer springboard for the women.
Both times it hit Andreas Toba, who luckily wasn’t injured. “Today I just left my bag somewhere,” Belenki jokes, adding that he wasn’t responsible for the board. “You’re nervous up there, we’re all human,” he says, only to speak badly about a German gymnast who isn’t in Antalya for the umpteenth time. One may call such statements spontaneous – or unprofessional. In any case, they are difficult to reconcile with the maxims that the German Gymnastics Federation has set itself as part of its “Performance with Respect” offensive.
“A New Star Born”
Valeri Belenki, who won team Olympic gold in 1992 with the Commonwealth of Independent States and then in 1997, then for Germany, won World Championship gold on the pommel horse, most recently worked successfully for more than twenty years as a state coach in Stuttgart. Under his aegis, Marcel Nguyen won the silver medal at the Olympic Games in all-around and parallel bars.
“Valer”, as the gymnasts call him, has been the head coach for a good year now. Since then, the 53-year-old has gotten lost in the meanders of constantly changing competition formats. So he announced before the last World Cup that his goal was 24th place, although there were only 24 teams at the start. In the outlook for the year 2023, he formulated reaching the team final at this European Championship as a requirement, but there will be no team final at all in Antalya. But the atmosphere in the team seems good and so are the performances.
“It was a cool feeling”
On Thursday, Pascal Brender, who made his debut at the European Championships, will be in the all-around final. “A new star was born, so to speak,” said Belenki appreciatively of the performance of the only 19-year-old. The biggest German surprise, however, came from Milan Hosseini, who qualified fourth for Saturday’s floor final, even though he’s not officially part of the German team.
Another curiosity of the mode: each country was allowed to bring a sixth gymnast as a single starter. “Being an individual starter in the team – that was a cool feeling and I didn’t feel left out at all,” jokes Hosseini. “The young gymnasts are there to take up important positions in the team,” was the positive conclusion from head coach Belenki.