"In the team final I will go to full difficulty": Dalaloyan on the feat in qualification, team all-around and family values

We agreed to call on Sunday morning immediately after the end of the men's qualification, but Dalaloyan did not pick up the phone at the appointed time.

A little later I called back myself and apologized.

- I had to stay in the store.

Today is a day of rest, so I decided to buy Olympic souvenirs for my loved ones.

And for this you need to rush to the store in the morning, otherwise everything is very quickly disassembled.

But I was lucky, I managed to buy everything I wanted.

- How do you feel after such a serious competitive load?

- Pretty good.

The first day turned out to be exciting for me, even too much, but in general I am satisfied with everything: both with my own performance, and with the team, and the coaching staff is quite satisfied with how we performed in qualifying.

Now you need to refresh yourself a little emotionally, recover - and again into battle.

- You have already explained that you independently made a decision to perform in all types of programs, but could you tell in more detail what exactly dictated it? Have you decided that your chances in the all-around may be higher than on individual apparatus, or were you guided solely by the interests of the team?

- Firstly, I do not think and have never considered that my chances on individual shells are not high enough.

But I like all-around more.

This format is absolutely comfortable for me, especially when I have enough strength for all six shells.

Now I have these powers.

Therefore, I thought that it would be wrong to give up the chance to take part in the all-around at the Olympic Games, not to take advantage of it.

After all, many do not get to this chance in their entire career.

And, of course, I understood that my participation in qualification in all types can strengthen the command position.

- In other words, if you had not entered the platform in the vault and floor exercise, as the coaches of the Russian national team originally planned

...

-… the guys and I would have scored a point less.

And maybe they would even have sagged and more significantly.

Look: in the vault, I got a higher mark than David Belyavsky, despite the fact that he did his full difficulty.

Well, in floor exercises, my result turned out to be more significant (by 0.767. -

RT

).

- The difficulty that you showed on these two shells in qualifying is the maximum that is available to you now?

- No no.

I performed the jump well, although I could have done better, but in the floor exercises I failed to complete the full difficulty - I lost about 0.4 on this.

Well, the cleanliness of the performance let us down: usually I work much cleaner.

Although, you can probably make some discount on the fact that this was the first performance on the carpet in a long period of time.

When you haven’t jumped for three months and you don’t train any kind of apparatus at all, it’s hard to start.

But in the team final I will go to full difficulty.

I quite attentively and purposefully went to such a decision and very much hope that our overall result in the final will be higher.

- Games in Tokyo are the first for you.

What is the difference - to compete on the Olympic platform or fight for medals at the World Championships?

- From the point of view of competition, the difference is small: the same platform, the same rivals.

But the whole entourage around - living in the Olympic village, the number of various athletes - this, of course, adds emotions and fascinates with the unusual atmosphere.

You immediately understand that this is something else.

- The empty stands did not put pressure on the psyche?

- Honestly?

For me at every competition, the main thing is to concentrate on my approaches and my feelings.

Ignore any external factors, including what is happening in the stands.

The main thing is to get the job done.

Then you can talk about everything else, communicate with journalists, give interviews and generally somehow react to what is happening around.

- I remember your words at the 2018 World Championships in Stuttgart about how cool it is to feel like a member of the strongest team in the world.

But just a couple of years before that, the bronze medalist of the Games in Beijing, Anton Golotsutskov, said that, in his opinion, Russia does not have any team.

- I would say that the team that we have now has been forming for a long time.

But it really exists.

There is a core, a backbone.

And, most importantly, there is a feeling that we are all one.

I see how each of the guys gives all the best for the team result.

We value these feelings very much.

- Is your coach Alexander Kalinin in Tokyo?

- Unfortunately no.

The coaching quota at the Olympics is limited, so the coach worries about me at home.

- Is it hard for you without him?

- Well, we are adults, we understand that the result should not depend on whether the mentor is nearby or not.

It is important to understand what and how you should do it yourself, so as not to let down either the coach or yourself.

Everything else is secondary.

And it certainly shouldn't shake confidence.

- For some athletes, the absence of a coach has a motivating effect: it increases the desire not to let down.

- I always have this thought: do not let the coach down, do not let the guys down, do not let the team down.

Who wants to flush their work down the toilet?

- In a pandemic, for the first time in a long time, you found yourself at home, and not at a training base.

Have you ever wondered how much you lose without seeing your family for months?

- I rethought many things, let's say.

I began to understand much better what a home is, what a family is.

That these are not just traditional video calls in the evenings, when you are sitting at the base.

I don't even know how to express it in words.

But the family is really the most precious and valuable thing that I have.

- One of your colleagues noticed that with the advent of children, he very clearly understood what he was training and performing for.

And since he is forced to sacrifice time to sports that he could spend with his family, it means that he must perform in such a way that his loved ones are not ashamed of him.

- I will subscribe to every word.

This is indeed the case, and I keep this in mind.