Gavin Cooney reports from the Bercy Arena

The 42 Editor’s note: This article by Gavin Cooney forms part of The 42′s subscriber-only coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics, with unique insights and fresh perspectives on the biggest stories every single day. If you’d enjoy more great sportswriting like this, you can sign up here for a free one-month trial to The 42.

BENEATH THE CHALK-HAZY lights of the Bercy Arena, Loran de Munck planted his hand a fraction of an inch to the right of where it was meant to go, and so he slipped of the pommel horse and ended his own dreams. 

Another nerve may have been knotted into Rhys McClenaghan.

De Munck had to remount to finish his routine, which meant finishing later than planned. 

McClenaghan’s pre-competition routine is always the same: he turns his back on the competitor immediately before him and instead visualises his routine.

De Munck wasn’t going to medal but now he was meddling. McClenaghan had finished his visualisation and had turned to make his way to the stage. 

The pommel horse final is purely about executing that which you practice to abnormal levels of precision. McClenaghan suddenly had the very first part of it thrown askew. 

De Munck slunk away and McClenaghan was called forward. He slapped his hands on each of the pommels as his coach Luke Carson adjusted them to his height. He then stood adjacent and waited for his call over the arena PA system. Does it always take this long? 

Given McClenaghan was announced as the reigning world champion, any neutral observers would have wondered why everyone back in Ireland was a fretting, tissue-frittering mess. 

But that’s because of Tokyo and the awesome weight freighted upon the Olympic Games. It’s a cruel kind of caprice, but the rest of the world only truly pays attention during the Olympics. It comes around every four years and so it means it so much more. Too much, if we’re honest. 

Nariman Kurbanov of Kazakhstan went first and sent an early ripple across the arena, awarded a 15.433, which outstripped McClenaghan’s qualifying score. Gulp. 

Next was two-time champion Max Whitlock, in his final appearance before retirement. Don’t go doing something stupid like writing a perfect farewell for yourself now, Max. But Whitlock erred in means not truly accessible to the vast majority of us. A tiny adjustment before his dismount hurt him, as did the separation of his legs during his swing on the horse.

One of the iron laws of pommel horse: do not split your legs. 

“Whenever you see a pommel horse worker splitting their legs, they’re nervous”, explained McClenaghan after it was all over. “They’ve felt something is off a little bit.” 

In training the routine earlier in the week, McClenaghan split his legs. Do it again and the Olympic gold would be going to somebody else. 

He and his coach Luke Carson believed the routine they had been training could score 15.6. Do that and nobody in the field would live with him. Not Kurbanov, not Nedoroscik, not Whitlock, nor anybody else. McClenaghan is so good it’s only about him and it’s never about anyone else. How terrifying is that? 

The key to that score is to make it damn difficult. Routines are scored by difficulty and by execution, and in the most elite field in gymnastics, everyone can execute. The greatest separate themselves by the scale of their ambition.

Think for a moment on the sheer sporting audacity of this. McClenaghan was returning to the stage most likely to summon the ghosts of his fall off the horse in the Olympic final three years ago, and he was returning to banish them with a more difficult routine. The most difficult routine of his life. 

What does that say about you Rhys? 

“It shows I’ve got balls.” 

And so McClenaghan snapped up and atop the pommel to fill the next minute with every single inch of the life he led to that moment. He clutched his legs together and swung great, generous circles which resembled steady radar pulses to the thousands looking down upon him. 

His hands then left the pommel and McClenaghan pat-pat-patted his way along the horse, continuing to swing in wide arcs while also somehow managing to rock forward and back.

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His routine flowed at a brisk and mildly scary tempo, further separating him from his more staccato rivals. The crowd’s murmurs were evolving to shouts and cheers: they may not know the intricacies of the apparatus but they knew this looked good. 

But still McClenaghan believed he needed more. Another ingredient of difficulty, another hostage to fortune, another chance for it all to go wrong. The added move is known as the Roth, named after the American gymnast, Bill Roth. It’s effectively a full journey down the pommel horse while completing a trio of spins.

It’s not the most difficult move in isolation, but to needlessly cram it in to the end of the biggest routine of your life as your muscles scream for sweet relief? That’s the stuff that peels the best away from the best.

McClenaghan knew he might not need to do it. He could just junk it on the fly and finish safely without disaster, without a repeat of Tokyo. But that wouldn’t guarantee the gold medal. The best must be audacious. 

And so McClenaghan completed his final journey down the horse flawlessly, before swinging his legs upwards to complete the handstand that comes before the dismount. The split second it took for his feet to point directly at the sky was long enough for everyone in the arena to realise that Rhys McClenaghan had run his gauntlet and come through without a scratch. 

His feet then hit the floor and the pressure and the tension of the last three years burst forth and set sail. 

It was at that point the rest of us knew.

Rhys McClenaghan had done what he had come to do.  

Written by Gavin Cooney and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.