Max Whitlock interview: ‘I’m taking more risks this year, that’s why I’m falling over a lot’

Taking it to the Max | Whitlock has upped the ante going into the Commonwealth Games, where he will increase the difficulty of his routines

Max Whitlock is talking as a young gymnast attempts to dismount the parallel bars only to fall flat on his face.

Having encountered similar descents, even as a double Olympic champion, Whitlock cannot help but laugh.

For most of the time since those historic medals in Rio, the 25-year-old has locked himself away at the gym where he has trained in Basildon for 12 years, adding greater complexity to his golden turns on the pommel horse and floor.

Now he is ready to unleash his new repertoire at the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast.

But Whitlock admits that taking more risks brings added, well, risk.

“There’s a lot of falling all over the place,” he says. “The routines are not perfected now but they will be.

“I’m increasing my start score on the floor again and am going for huge risk, but this is the year to try it out.

“I want to mirror four years to Rio. From London to Rio, I packed in difficulty right from the beginning. I’m trying to do the same for Tokyo (the next Olympics in 2020). You make the risk now so it goes right.

“But it’s hard even increasing that score by one-tenth. It’s so easy to get a one-tenth deduction, but it’s so hard to add one-tenth. But it’s not just the start value but the look and feel.

“We’re judged by humans so I want my routine to be different, creative, slightly unique. It’s got to stand out from hundreds of other competitors, so you have to be slightly clever.”

Whitlock has become more erudite since making his mark on the world stage and is a far cry from the boy too shy to even speak to a shopkeeper that his coach, Scott Hann, had to order his sweets for him.

He has blossomed into the statesman for his sport, opening gyms carrying his name and continuing to blaze a trail with his increasing medal haul.

Whitlock has a soft spot for the Commonwealth Games, the event in which he began his accumulation of honours in 2010. But the build-up then was far from smooth. “My parents came out to Delhi and had to move hotels as their one was that bad,” he recalls.

“They kept that from me but, when they turned up at the venue, I told them my back was hurting and I didn’t know if I could compete.”

In the end, Whitlock did take part, winning two silvers and a bronze medal after the back issue, which doctors had once told him might end his gymnastics career, subsided in time. It wasn’t the first occasion that Whitlock had to contend with health concerns. When aged 14, he was told his ailments might stop his then burgeoning career.

“I was told that a couple of times, earlier when I dislodged a growth plate in my arm and was told my arm might not grow,” he recalls. “But I don’t think I ever thought that was realistic. I felt it wasn’t that gymnastics caused this, it was just me. The back spasms - and they were bad, sometimes having to just lie down for two hours - eventually wore off.”

In Australia, Whitlock will opt out of the all-around individual event, focusing instead on the pommel, floor and team event, starting overnight.

He says the Games are part of the building block to Tokyo and trying to emulate, even improve on, his feats in Rio. He loved Brazil, riding the crest of a wave in the months afterwards, but admitted the lull kicked in.

“For four years it had been routine, routine, routine, competition after competition,” he says. “I needed the time off and wanted to make sure I was itching to come back to the gym. But Rio was very surreal.”

Whitlock could have been forgiven for resting on his laurels after Rio but he admits to an almost unreasonable commitment to gymnastics.

He adds: “You need to be obsessive I think but chilled at the same time, if that makes sense. But winning the pommel world title last year - defending my title - was massively motivating as I wasn’t 100 per cent. You need to be ambitious and be the best you can be.

“I can’t stand still, that won’t be good enough as there’s so many youngsters coming through.

“I’m glad I took the time off after Rio, three months out of the gym and six months without competing, because I now feel massively motivated.”

For hour after hour, he continues to strain for a perfection that, in truth, no gymnast will ever attain. Does the sense of that ever dawn on him?

“I’ve never looked at it that way,” he says. “It’s a strange way of thinking as I’ll never hit 100 per cent perfection. But it’s the same with any sport: you’re trying as hard as possible to get that. You train as hard as you can, so you never lose in your head. I don’t plan to.”

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