McClenaghan seeks to bounce back with more Euro gold

Great champions don't always win but they have the ability to take a bad performance, learn from it and put it in the rear-view mirror.

Rhys McClenaghan hopes to do just that at the Men's Artistic European Championships in Zagreb this week.

After finishing sixth in the recent Commonwealth Games while debuting a new routine, the Olympic pommel horse gold medallist went straight back to training, aiming to correct what went wrong.

"It’s not forgotten about, there’s a lot of lessons I could take from the Commonwealth Games," McClenaghan told BBC Sport NI.

"Since the day I got back, I was back in the gym working on the mistakes - switching about some things and just ultimately trying to better the result for Europeans, but also still keeping the trajectory of improving the routine, testing out its construction."

McClenaghan is not overhauling the routine and certainly is not rushing into any panic measures.

He has bounced back before. Four years ago he failed to reach the final of the Europeans before going on to win his first world title just a few months later.

That kick-started a stretch of two world titles, two European successes and the Olympic gold in Paris, a run of majors that ended in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games.

"I don't like to make too big of a change when there's only a few weeks between Commonwealth and Europeans," he added.

"Changing everything would mean that I didn't trust that routine in the first place. I do trust that routine. Just some tweaks here and there are to be made.

"It's a good place to be. Just making small adjustments that will give a much bigger result."

The Newtownards gymnast is still making his way back from the shoulder injury that forced him to miss all of 2025.

The Commonwealth Games was his first major competition since the Olympics in Paris two years ago.

Even great champions get nervous, something he admitted to in Glasgow.

"I mean, nerves are going to play a part. I think they'll always play a part. I'm nervous in every competition I do but I guess it's just, becoming familiar with those nerves," he said.

"The more I compete, the more I know how my body responds and know how my mind responds to those nerves.

"So after Commonwealth Games, you can really just take a lot of lessons, not just with the technicalities of the routine, but just how I felt and how I'll be feeling going into the next competition. I feel like I'm going to be a much more measured and relaxed athlete going into these Europeans."

McClenaghan faces new challenges as he prepares over the next two years to defend his Olympic title.

New rules in gymnastics favour the all-around gymnast as opposed to the apparatus specialist like him.

Without being too technical, McClenaghan's lengthy routines, packed with difficulty and skills, would separate him from the rest of the field.

Now routines are shorter and require fewer elements. It means more gymnasts can compete at the higher end of the sport.

McClenaghan admits it’s a challenge but "one I welcome" and “it only pushes me to be a better gymnast".

"If I'm willing to call myself one of the best pommel horse workers of all time, I should be able to adapt to these rules, so it's fun," he added.

Ultimately, no matter how this week goes, the goal is be in the best shape possible to defend his Olympic crown in 2028.

At the same stage in the Paris cycle he had only one European title and no global successes and had fallen off the horse at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Now he is chasing a fourth continental gold and later this year a third World title.

“I guess I would love a similar story to the last Olympic cycle, where there's a couple of world titles in there and an Olympic gold at the end of the tunnel,” he says.

“And ultimately just being my best on the day of the Olympic final, which I was in Paris. I performed a personal best.

“I performed my most difficult routine yet and this is what I mean about these are all stepping stones. I should be incrementally progressing towards just the best version of myself. At the time of the Paris Olympic Games, on that day, I was like, yes, this is the best version of myself that I am right now.

“Hopefully I'll be saying the same thing in LA.”