Rhys McClenaghan: World champion admits he doubted himself after high-profile slip-ups

McClenaghan poses with his World Championships gold medal after arriving at Dublin Airport on Monday

Rhys McClenaghan has admitted that high-profile disappointments forced him to question himself before bouncing back to win pommel horse gold at the World Gymnastics Championships.

The 23-year-old became Ireland's first gymnastics world champion in Liverpool on Saturday.

However, that success followed a series of heartaches on the Olympic, World and European stages.

"Even I doubted myself," McClenaghan told Sportsound Extra Time.

"I'll be completely honest about saying that."

Newtownards gymnast McClenaghan scored 15.300 in his final routine to beat Jordan's Ahmad Abu Al Soud and Armenia's Harutyun Merdinyan to the pommel horse title in Liverpool.

• Listen to the full McClenaghan interview on Sportsound Extra Time

Success on the World Championships stage capped a rollercoaster couple of years for McClenaghan, who secured a Commonwealth Games silver medal for Northern Ireland in the summer.

His second-place finish in Birmingham was achieved despite a turbulent build-up in which the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) ruled that he and team-mates Eamon Montgomery and Ewan McAteer could not perform for NI as they compete for Ireland in international competition before the governing body reversed its decision.

However, McClenaghan failed to qualify for the European Championship final two weeks later, which served as further blows to his confidence after finishing seventh in the Tokyo Olympic final and missing out on last year's World Championships final.

He added: "When I was having these mistakes, I was thinking 'is this how I'm going to compete from now on?'

"But I proved to myself in the last couple of competitions and at the World Championships under a huge amount of pressure that I can still perform the best routine in the world."

McClenaghan's world title adds to the European and Commonwealth gold medals he won for Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively in 2018.

He now needs an Olympic gold medal to complete his set having fallen short in Tokyo.

But while he is determined to achieve Olympic redemption, he plans to bask in his latest triumph before setting his sights on the road to Paris, with next year's World Championships in Antwerp a key event in his quest to qualify for the 2024 Games.

"I'm a world champion and I feel like it's a moment I should relish in a bit longer," he said.

"I'm certainly on course [for the Olympics] and I can't wait for another opportunity."

McClenaghan's success in Liverpool is the high watermark of an eight-year partnership with coach Luke Carson and it came after the pair decided to change his routine on the pommel horse.

"I remember having a conversation with Rhys and his parents in 2014, saying 'I believe that he can be a world champion'," said Carson.

"Here we are in 2022 and it has happened so it is diligence personified."

Carson added: "We changed the routine back to one which he was comfortable with. After Tokyo, we tried a different approach which we felt would increase his execution.

"We changed one of the skills and put a new one in. Perhaps it needed more time to incubate. Sometimes you have to stress-test those things in real-life environments, which is what we did in Munich for the Europeans and the Commonwealths.

"It didn't work out how we wanted it to but we went back to the drawing board, did a big debrief and realised this was the best chance going into the World Championships.

"Next year is looking very exciting because there is more to come. There are some upgraded routines coming our way."