Rhys McClenaghan laments the 'fine margins'

It’s not much more than a year now since his Olympic dreams ended ten seconds into his final routine. This makes it three setbacks suffered in major competitions in a very short but significant passage of time

DISAPPOINTMENT: Ireland's Rhys McClenaghan. Pic: INPHO/Tom Maher

The small crowd sat quiet and expectant at the start of yesterday’s session in the Olympiahalle as Rhys McClenaghan gripped the handles of the pommel horse and hoisted himself up for a routine that would elicit an appreciative chorus of claps and gasps over the 48 seconds that followed.

If elite sportspeople are the one percenters then this 23-year old is the elite’s elite. A European champion four years ago, he added a bronze at the World Championships a year later. There has been a gold and a silver from two Commonwealth Games as well, though the last of those, won in Birmingham in July, was a disappointment.

This was worse. This was unfathomable.

Few others would produce a performance on pommel that rated higher for difficulty but his execution fell short and a score of 14.200 left him vulnerable. One of his country’s main medal contenders across all the sports here this week, he was now in danger of missing the weekend’s finals.

Gymnastics isn’t easy to decode, but Irish ambitions were simple enough yesterday with McClenaghan and Dominick Cunningham among those looking to bag a place in one of the weekend’s individual apparatus finals and the five-man team hoping to earn a top-13 finish and, with it, qualification for the collective to the Worlds in October.

McClenaghan needed a top-eight spot to chase for pommel medals on Sunday but he finished the first of three subdivisions – think heats in athletics – in second spot and then faced an interminable wait of over six hours before discovering his fate.

He wasn’t hanging around to find out, opting instead to retreat to the team hotel and let time and events take their own course. He sounded in turns nervous, peaceful and bullish after his own morning session but a nervousness ran through every word like a stick of rock. And with good reason.

“I’m not really sure what gymnasts are here that can challenge that score,” he said. “I guess I just chill out for the day. I’m not too interested in watching other people’s performances. It’s out of my hands now so no point in stressing about it.” 

He was better off away from it. What followed was a sporting twist on the sword of Damocles, his fate hanging in the balance for almost seven hours as one name and then another posted a score to push him another place down the list.

Confirmation of the worst came shortly before 7pm when the 38-year old Armenian Harutyun Merdinya, a five-time European medallist in pommel and the 2016 champion, earned a 14.500 to squeeze the Irishman into ninth where he stayed.

There was painfully little in it. Another Armenian, Artur Davtyan, sat on the very same points but ahead of him by that one crucial place on the ladder by dint of the fact that his execution score had been the higher.

“Achin,” McClenaghan tweeted minutes later.

There is still an outside chance of a reprieve. Listed as the first reserve in the official results, he would be first man called if any of those above him cannot compete. Sunday will find him warming up in the arena just in case but, whatever of that, the next chapter will be interesting.

It’s not much more than a year now since his Olympic dreams ended ten seconds into his final routine at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre. That disappointment owed to a slip and a score of 13.200 for seventh place so this makes it three setbacks suffered in major competitions in a very short but significant passage of time.

“My body is ready, my mind is in a very good place,” he said yesterday. “There’s just a couple of mistakes that set that score off but we done the first job of staying on the pommel horse and that’s the first job done. I split my legs in the same skill (as in Birmingham).

“So there is going to be a lot of rethinking there with the coach about whether that skill is right for me in the routine. It’s going well in training but when it comes to the competition it just gets a bit off and that’s me tightening up the body wrong or something.

“It’s the fine margins in this sport.” 

His weren't the only regrets. Eamon Montgomery was disappointed with his effort on the floor, Ewan McAteer was left to rue a few mistakes, Dominick Cunningham finished in the teens in vault and on floor, although Daniel Fox was thrilled to be back competing at this level for the first time in six years having retired during Covid.

Cunningham and Fox did secure individual qualification spots for the World Championships where they will join McClenaghan, Adam Steele and Montgomery who qualified through the World Cup circuit.