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May 5th, 2013 
Peter Nolan When David Belyavskiy turned in sharp, strong performance to win the European men’s title in Moscow a couple of weeks ago, one word came to mind: finally.
Belyavskiy is one of the world’s most talented male gymnasts, and has been since he floored the competition as a 16-year-old at the 2009 European Youth Olympic Festival. As a rookie senior at the World Championships the next year, he threw stunning skills like a double full in back out pike on floor and a double front pike parallel bars dismount, skills nobody had ever seen before. It was like watching a new era unfold before your eyes. (Check him out on floor at the 2011 Worlds here.)
In spite of three years on the international circuit, the European title in Moscow is Belyavskiy’s first big victory. And it begs the question: Why?
Not since the great Alexei Nemov a Russian man really captured the attention of the gymnastics world. (And Nemov, as the excellent Rewriting Russian Gymnastics has pointed out, was really more ofthe “last of the Soviets” than the “first of the Russians.”)
But why hasn’t Russia, the largest country in the former Soviet Union, been able to carry on in the very golden Soviet tradition? The team has not had a meltdown, though the displeasure when Russian gymnasts failed to bring home any medals from the 2008 Olympics was palpable.
They have always maintained a high level of difficulty, though more recently their all-arounders seemed to finish in the middle of the pack at World Championships (Maxim Deviatovskiy, I’m looking at you.) It’s not that the Russians weren’t producing excellent, first class gymnasts. It’s more that the rest of the world (namely China, Japan and the U.S.) caught up.
Belyavskiy is the epitome of the team’s way of doing gymnastics: solid, difficult work that seems impeccable and yet sometimes lacks some fire (although perhaps, when you’re doing such difficult skills, it’s a bit much to ask that they be done passionately.)
But in Moscow, the fire was blazing. From his first rotation (vault) onward, you got the idea that Belyavskiy sensed that this competition was his for the taking, and that he wasn’t going to let the opportunity eclipse him again.
The new Russian men are not the old Soviets, who espoused a sense of elegance that except in rare cases (Koehi Uchimura, Oleg Verniaiev) seems to have left the arena long ago. The women’s team has done a much better job of keeping it alive. Belyavskiy may change things, or he may continue to be what he has been in his senior “youth” — a reliable team player, a good all-arounder, a man who finishes in the middle of the pack.
But probably not. We should expect more from the young European champion, and his team, in the future.
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