McClenaghan targets fourth European pommel horse title in Zagreb this week

Rhys McClenaghan will attempt to win a fourth European pommel horse title at the Men's Artistic European Championships in Zagreb this week after finishing sixth in the Commonwealth Games. The Olympic pommel horse gold medallist went straight back to training aiming to correct what went wrong in Glasgow.

McClenaghan debuted a new routine at the Commonwealth Games and described taking lessons from that performance. "It’s not forgotten about, there’s a lot of lessons I could take from the Commonwealth Games," McClenaghan told BBC Sport NI. "Since the day I got back, I was back in the gym working on the mistakes - switching about some things and just ultimately trying to better the result for Europeans, but also still keeping the trajectory of improving the routine, testing out its construction." He is still recovering from a shoulder injury that forced him to miss all of 2025, and the Commonwealth Games was his first major competition since the Olympics in Paris two years ago.

Four years ago McClenaghan failed to reach the European final before going on to win his first world title a few months later. That victory preceded two world titles, two European successes and the Olympic gold in Paris. That sequence of major wins ended with his sixth-place finish in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games.

He says he is making targeted adjustments rather than overhauling the routine. "I don't like to make too big of a change when there's only a few weeks between Commonwealth and Europeans," he added. "Changing everything would mean that I didn't trust that routine in the first place. I do trust that routine. Just some tweaks here and there are to be made. "It's a good place to be. Just making small adjustments that will give a much bigger result."

McClenaghan acknowledged nerves affected him in Glasgow and that competing more helps him manage them. "I mean, nerves are going to play a part. I think they'll always play a part. I'm nervous in every competition I do but I guess it's just, becoming familiar with those nerves," he said. "The more I compete, the more I know how my body responds and know how my mind responds to those nerves. "So after Commonwealth Games, you can really just take a lot of lessons, not just with the technicalities of the routine, but just how I felt and how I'll be feeling going into the next competition. I feel like I'm going to be a much more measured and relaxed athlete going into these Europeans."

He faces the challenge of recent rule changes that favour the all-around gymnast over apparatus specialists like him, with routines now shorter and requiring fewer elements. The rule alterations, he accepts, broaden the field at the top level but are something he has embraced. He called the adjustment "one I welcome" and said it "only pushes me to be a better gymnast" and added: "If I'm willing to call myself one of the best pommel horse workers of all time, I should be able to adapt to these rules, so it's fun."

McClenaghan has set his sights on longer-term targets as well as the Europeans, aiming to be in the best shape possible to defend his Olympic crown in 2028. He is chasing a fourth continental gold in Zagreb this week and later this year a third World title. “I guess I would love a similar story to the last Olympic cycle, where there's a couple of world titles in there and an Olympic gold at the end of the tunnel,” he says, adding that at Paris he "performed a personal best."