There is no apparatus in men’s gymnastics as unforgiving as the pommel horse. If you approach it with any hint of nerves or tension, you are done. Even among the very best in the world, many of whom count it as their strongest apparatus, it at times feels like a coin flip.
Still, nobody in this modern era of elite gymnastics has made their performance on the pommel horse look as reliable as Max Whitlock, already among the all-time greats on the apparatus. On Saturday afternoon, though, Whitlock’s attempt to become the first man to win four world gold medals on the apparatus ended with a bitter fall late in his routine and a fifth-place finish.
Instead, it was Rhys McClenaghan of Ireland, a former prodigy who had to learn how to live with disappointment before soaring, who triumphed. A year after winning his first world title, the 24-year-old again handled the pressure and performed at his highest when he needed to retain his title.
The first day of event finals was full of difficulties for the two most decorated gymnasts in action as Simone Biles fell on her incredibly difficult Biles II vault, but she still managed to win silver in the final. It took a spectacular pair of vaults from Rebeca Andrade, the all-around silver medallist, to win gold.
Whitlock has established a reputation for his supreme mental strength under pressure, qualities that have produced six global gold medals and 14 overall. After taking a year off from gymnastics after winning gold in Tokyo, he demonstrated his sharpness throughout this past week by effortlessly nailing each routine in qualifying and team finals.
But anyone can fall. Whitlock stepped up to the pommel horse and worked efficiently through his challenging routine, but just as he neared the end, Whitlock’s hand slipped and the medal was gone. He fell off, receiving a score of 14.3 points.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said. “If I watch it back, I’ll think ‘Why did I not just do this or that?’ but in the heat of the moment, that’s what happened and I can’t change that.”
Five years ago, McClenaghan burst on to the scene at 18 years old, beating Whitlock to win pommel horse gold at the Commonwealth Games in 2018. But he then struggled to take a step forward on the world stage, his Olympic Games ending in a mistake of his own and ample soul searching. But at the end of a long final, the 24-year-old once stood up and weaved through a clean, effortless routine under fierce pressure to snatch his second gold.
Whitlock’s comeback was bittersweet. The 30-year-old has been candid about how, after winning his third Olympic gold medal in Tokyo on the pommel horse, his mental health deteriorated and he seriously considered retirement. “There’s definitely positives I can draw from it even though the final result wasn’t what I hoped for,” he said.
“The positives are I have been out for a very long time from the sport, it’s very hard to come back, I do have that expectancy constantly on my shoulders. It was one mistake throughout the world championships for me. So overall I can be pretty pleased, to a certain extent. I suppose I’m a bit hard on myself.”
Even when Biles falls, her errors are spectacular. The few gymnasts who have competed the enormously difficult Yurchenko double pike usually struggle with the amount of power required to complete the two backwards somersaults. Then she fell during the vault final, Biles injected too much power into it.
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It is also a reflection of the peerless difficulty of the skill, Biles’s amplitude and form in the air that despite being deducted a full point for the fall and half a point due to the presence of coach Laurent Landi on the vaulting mat as emotional support, Biles still scored 14.433pts. A solid subsequent Cheng vault from the 26-year-old received a score of 14.666pts, yielding an average score of 14.549pts.
After seven other competitors failed to match Biles, Andrade, the Olympic champion in Tokyo, stepped up. The 24-year-old performed a spectacularly high and clean Cheng vault, taking just a step to her right and scoring 15.000pts. She followed it up with similar amplitude and form on her double twisting Yurchenko, which scored a huge 14.500pts for an average of 14.750pts.
Before the Olympics in Tokyo, Andrade had not won a single global medal in a career defined by her three anterior cruciate ligament tears and missed potential. Now she has nine of them, including four golds. While Biles has established herself as the best of all-time, few others can match up to the career Andrade continues to build in her own right.
