Four years ago, in the London athletes’ village, things were becoming a bit too hot for Kristian Thomas: Louis Smith had secretly switched the air‑conditioning unit in his room to heating mode as payback for the innumerable pranks that Thomas had pulled on him. It was, at least, good practice for the streets of Rio.
The heat is on for the men’s gymnasts in every sense. In London, when Britain competed in their first team final, they went out with nothing to lose and finished with a surprise bronze. Next week, the expectations on the five-man team will be far higher.
“It’s a big, drastic change,” Thomas says, “and the hardest thing for us is changing our mindset. Over the last four years we’ve been in a position where we go to competitions expecting to win a medal and anything less is a disappointment.”
Last year, Britain took their first team silver at the world championships and it speaks volumes of their new status that finishing second in the Europeans for the past two years has been a bit of a letdown. Two additions to the Olympic team, Nile Wilson and Brinn Bevan, amply demonstrate how competitive the squad has become – there was no place for Dan Purvis, Thomas’s training partner, for the first time in almost a decade – and Wilson’s high-bar routine will be a particular one to watch.
Smith’s return to the pommel horse, after a premature retirement and a tangential journey into TV, has him back to his best: he took European gold and world silver last year. Rio will be his last attempt at an Olympic title; the problem is, he now has to compete for it with his team-mate Max Whitlock, who became Britain’s first world champion when he beat Smith to the title last year.
The 23-year-old from Hemel Hempstead, who took bronze in London, is now the undisputed master of the craft – he has the most difficult routine in competition – as well as a contender for an all-around medal. Having overcome the glandular fever that threatened to derail his training last year (he missed this year’s European championships as a precaution) Whitlock could be the greatest gymnast Britain has fielded and he is calmly comfortable with the spotlight. “I just keep doing what I’m doing and go with the flow,” he says. “I don’t look at it any differently to how I did when I was 17.”
Still, it would be quite a performance to steal all-around gold from his personal hero and the reigning Olympic champion, Kohei Uchimura of Japan, who has won every world title since 2009 and is apparently just as competitive at Pokemon Go. After playing it incessantly since his arrival in Rio, he received a £3,700 bill from his phone company – since rescinded – and anything other than gold would be just as big a shock.
