IN OCTOBER, RHYS McClenaghan scaled the mountain only he scaled a year earlier, successfully defending his world championship title on the pommel horse while securing Olympic qualification in the process.
McClenaghan caught up with The 42 before Christmas: let’s start by allowing him to explain what went through his mind in the minutes before one of the biggest routines of his life.
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I don’t watch everybody. I’m in the warm up hall, still warming up my routine, but there’s two giant LED screens in the hall with the competition going on. You can hear the gasps for somebody falling off or the applause for someone doing well. You need to kind of keep your cool. You need to stay focused on your job because that is the amazing thing about gymnastics: the only person who can mess it up is you. It’s not like boxing, where your opponent is trying to mess up your plan and trying to ruin your day for you. Nobody’s got anything to do with gymnastics apart from you.
Of course, there are distractions. There’s 15,000 people in the crowd; there’s a panel of judges; your competitors line up beside the pommel horse. But you just need to get that tunnel vision and get into your zone; to do what you’ve done in training. And if your training has been done well, then you can rely on that. You can decide for yourself, ‘Okay, this is just another training session.’
When the competitor before me is going on the pommel, then I turn my back and close my eyes and go through my routine in my head. It’s a nice focus: what we’re here for is this one routine.
I know when I put my hands on the pommel, that’s my happy place. When I place my hands on those handles, it’s the most calm I feel all day because that’s the most familiar part of my day. And when I feel that calm, I am relying solely on the training that I’ve done.
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When McClenaghan removed his hands from the pommel in Antwerp, he was a double world champion. He was the last of the eight finalists to perform, but a flawless performance scored 15.100, successfully defending his gold medal ahead of American Khoi Young (14.966) and Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al-Soud (14.633.) It was a stacked field: two-time Olympic champion Max Whitlock finished fifth.
So, Rhys McClenaghan: Double World Champion. How does that feel?
“It feels very good,” he smiles. “I said before I even got my first world medal that I want to be one of the greatest in this event ever and I’m slowly cementing my spot there. I’m eighth in the all-time total medal table at the minute, on the horse event. One more world title will actually bring me up to maybe second, or even first. That’s my goal: to be one of the greatest.
“A philosophy is mine is to aim as high as possible. And if you fall short, you’ve at least done something great. I don’t even see the point in trying to beat the current best in the world because that might be setting your standards lower than what you’re capable of. I wouldn’t even be looking at the top person on that list of names on the pommel horse. I would just be looking past it and thinking, how can I fulfill my potential?
“It’s a scary thing to do and there’s a reason why not many people do it. If you highlight what success is to you, then you’re highlighting what failure is to you. People don’t like to do that. People like to keep things really foggy. I’m not sitting here saying I’m definitely going to do this because I can’t tell the future and I can’t tell what’s going to happen, but I’m going to do everything in my power to hopefully become the greatest.
“The key is not being scared of the failures and knowing that the failures are going to be there, but not shying away from them in any way because if you shy away from the failures, then you’re shying away from success too.”
Of his two world medals, McClenaghan says the first will always be the sweetest, as it justified a life’s work. He describes this year’s triumph, however, as his greatest achievement, as it came weeks after a distressing experience at a World Cup event in Paris.
“In Paris, I felt more nervous than I ever had before,” he says. “I felt like I was in a state of panic before my warm up had even started.” He and his coach Luke Carson considered withdrawing from the event entirely, fearing a fall might harm preparations for the world championships. McClenaghan decided to forge ahead, however, and says his main victory at the competition was his making it to the position from which he could clamp his hands to the pommel horse.
“That felt like a relief,” he says, and he went on to deliver a good routine and take silver. But he and his coach knew something was wrong.
“I’m not sure what triggered it,” says McClenaghan. “It wasn’t my biggest competition, it was just a World Cup event. Maybe it was just all of the pressure of retaining the world title and qualifying to the Olympics. It’s not easy to qualify to the Olympics: I was the only one in that final who qualified, which is crazy. Maybe I bottled everything up and it all spilled out in Paris.
“I really wasn’t myself the entire build up to world championships. I didn’t feel like my bubbly, happy self and we just knew that there was work that needed to be done. So we really dived into the mental aspect of it. The physical preparation was being done and being done successfully. But when it comes down to competition and that routine that you need to perform, you need to be in the right mindset.”
McClenaghan came off social media and prioritisied his mental well-being. His first thoughts on waking up each day ahead of the world championships were not about gymnastics but were instead a kind of check-in on himself: How am I feeling? Am I mentally well?
The situation was managed well enough to allow him feel utter calm when he touched the pommel horse in Antwerp. The mental work will remain an ongoing process ahead of net year’s Olympics.
“Even after I won my second world title,” he says, “I was still like, ‘Ok, great relief, qualified to Paris, got the second world title. Now it’s time to revisit this mental state. What’s going on here? How can we fix this for Paris and for the rest of my life? How can I improve on this?’”
The Tokyo Olympics remains virtually the only wrinkle in McClenaghan’s otherwise linear career trajectory. He became the first Irish gymnast to qualify for an Olympic final but then fell short of his own ambition by falling early in his routine: his admirable recovery was only good enough for seventh place.
“I’ll be walking away from this a more dangerous man than ever before,” he said in its immediate aftermath, “because with disappointment comes an incredible amount of motivation and inspiration.”
That motivation was very real – he wanted to go back to the gym that evening – and it continues to burn.
“I obviously talked the talk on the lead up to Tokyo and then it didn’t happen for me,” says McClenaghan, “and a lot of people would think, ‘Oh, well, he’s going to change his mindset. He’s going to be a little bit more like reserved and maybe just go for the bronze medal or be happy to make the Olympics again.’ And I would be happy with all those things. But my goal is to become an Olympic champion and my mind frame doesn’t change.”
Banking qualification for the Olympics so early is a benefit to preparation, and his ticket earns him the right to compete at all six events if he wishes, rather than just the pommel horse. He has been training a floor routine as he sees it as another realistic route to a medal, though admits it may not be realistic to be ready to compete for a podium at Paris, with the LA Games in 2028 the more serious target.
He may have to adapt his pommel horse routine too, and may add a higher degree of difficulty to ensure he can keep ahead of a ferociously competitive field. That, however, will be the extent of the conscious difference.
“It is just another routine. It’s not like it is something I am manifesting and trying to believe in that’s not a reality: the reality is that it is another routine. There’s nothing going to be anything different about the pommel horse: it’s not going to be changed in any way from the Olympic Games because they are the Olympics.
“It’s still about going back to that calm feeling when I place my hands on the pommel. That’s a feeling I look forward to at the Olympic Games.”
