German Gymnastics Medal: Not Dauser's day - but Dark's

Created: 08/22/2022, 09:51 am

By: Gunter Klein

“Thinking from element to element”: Nils Dunkel took bronze on the pommel horse.

© AFP/Ina Fassbender

Local hero Lukas Dauser is under time pressure at the European Gymnastics Championships and fails – Nils Dunkel wins a German pommel horse medal.

Munich – "It shouldn't be an excuse," says Lukas Dauser.

But the German gymnastics star from Unterhaching is looking for a reason why it didn't work out for him at the European Championships in front of a beautiful home backdrop and on his parade device, the parallel bars, on which he won Olympic silver in 2021.

In the final he was eighth, he had to come off the apparatus and start again.

13.633 points, winner Joe Fraser from Great Britain turned a 15.333.

So: What happened after Dauser had performed brilliantly both in the qualification on Thursday and in the team final on Saturday?

His bad luck must have been that he was fifth.

According to a change in the regulations that has been in effect since this year, there is a short break after the fourth gymnast, the second group is allowed to warm up briefly.

But Dauser was given little time, he was still in the process of preparing the bars and had neither "moved his legs" nor "been able to go through my exercise mentally" - the traffic light already turned green for him.

He had to go.

"The beginning was okay.

Then I became too passive.” Head coach Valeri Belenki registered: “Lukas got nervous.”

At Dauser, everything always has to be right.

"He's a bit more of a professional athlete than I am when it comes to self-discipline," says national team comrade-in-arms Nils Dunkel.

"Lukas is already an hour before it starts, in full competition." He himself pushes him as far away as possible.

But on Sunday his concept was the better one.

Nils Dunkel scored 14,633 points for the pommel horse exercise, for which he received bronze.

The 25-year-old from Erfurt then revealed: "I didn't see myself as well as the judges did." He "felt that I had to press", but the jury didn't notice his effort.

Dark felt better the day before, when he had completed his pommel horse performance in the team final: "She encouraged me, even though the rating was worse."

National coach Valeri Belenki, who himself had been a pommel horse champion, embraced his gymnast in awe.

They shared the relief.

Nils Dunkel admitted "that I was nervous because the pommel horse is a shaking device".

It is also said: the men's balance beam.

Dunkel explained: You can no longer take corrective action once an element has just started.

His second was “a 360-degree turn on one hand, and once you're off the shoulder axis.

.

.” It worked for him and everything else too.

“You think about the pommel horse from element to element to element, consider what is to come and what you have to pay attention to.

And only when you stand is it over.”

Like many gymnasts, Nils Dunkel was fascinated by the Olympic Hall: "It pushes the noise down."

It was rather stressful for Lukas Dauser: "Here in Munich the disappointment is extreme.

And it will still be there tomorrow.”

The medals on the six devices were widely distributed.

Gold went to Great Britain (two), Greece, Armenia, Little Cyprus (Marios Georgiou on high bar) and Israel (Artem Dolgopyat on floor).

50 years after the 1972 Olympics, Israel's anthem sounded.

A worthy moment on the final day of the Championships.