A “gutted” Max Whitlock vowed to put the disappointment of another Team GB near-miss swiftly behind him as he targets a fairytale Olympic send-off in Saturday’s pommel horse final.
Great Britain’s male gymnasts missed out on a medal in Monday night’s team final at the Bercy Arena, finishing fourth for the third Games in a row.
Whitlock, who was part of the quintet that claimed an historic bronze at London 2012, had been seeking to win the seventh medal of his career, which would have moved him level with Sir Chris Hoy as the country’s third-most decorated Olympian.
Instead, however, Britain were denied by an inspired American team as Japan snatched gold ahead of China in a dramatic finish.
“It was hard,” Whitlock, a three-time gold medalist as an individual, said afterwards. “I’m really, really gutted actually. Fourth is always difficult and we’ve come fourth quite a few times now at the Olympic Games. That’s really tough.
“Right now it feels quite raw. There’s a bit of disappointment but I think overall we can be quite proud. We did everything we possibly could.”
Whitlock’s performance on pommel horse, Team GB’s first piece of apparatus, was one of the major positives as the 31-year-old prepares to defend the individual title he won in both Tokyo and Rio this weekend.
Having qualified for that final in third-place, the reigning champion upped his routine’s difficulty here and delivered a score of 15.266, the highest of any athlete so far at the Games across both qualifying and the team final.
"I can take a lot of confidence from that today because that was the big routine, the highest difficulty, the highest risk-factor, which has the most chance of getting the biggest score,” Whitlock said.
“The first piece is always nerve-wracking. It definitely was that. But I was mega-pleased that we all got off to a good start. There are still some errors in there that I can hopefully try and clean up before the final. But overall, I’m well happy with that.”
The most successful British gymnast of all-time now has just one competition left in his career before heading into retirement after Saturday’s final.
"Qualification was pretty emotional for me, which I was surprised with,” he added. “It was almost hard to control in the warm-up gym. I felt a lot of emotion that I’ve never felt in any competition before.
“What helps me is that I can be proud of what I’ve done. I’ve come out here in my fourth Olympic Games. I’m happy to be in this position. I wanted to get in a position where I had the potential to gain another title and that’s what I’ve put myself in.”
