Reuben Ward held his nerve and soaked up the adulation of a capacity home crowd as he was crowned Scotland’s first ever men’s all-around gymnastics champion at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Ward, who turned 21 last weekend, scored a total of 79.650 across his six apparatus, just enough to hold off surging Canadian Felix Dolci, who recovered from two falls on the pommel to take silver, with Australia’s Jesse Moore winning bronze.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Ward said. “I only found out recently that no Scottish man had ever won the Commonwealth all-around title, so to make that bit of history is incredibly special.
“There were moments after I landed a dismount where I was just relieved to have got through it, and then I’d hear the crowd roaring. It felt like they were doing it with me. I wasn’t out there on my own.”
Ward had made no secret of his ambition to win a Commonwealth Games medal and was narrowly denied during the men’s team event on Friday, when he and his team-mates were beaten into fourth place by just over a point.
He stood at the top of a congested leaderboard at the end of the first two rotations and retained his advantage to the delight of the home crowd, essentially just requiring him to keep hold of the high bar.
Ward’s score of 12.7 looked certain to be enough but there were some desperately nervous moments when Dolci, who rebounded after falling twice during his pommel routine, delivered a superb routine and all eyes turned to the scoreboard.
Ultimately a 14.5 for Dolci, the star of the Canadian team that had wrested team gold from England’s clutches on Friday, confirmed his silver medal and enabled the Manchester-based Ward to soak up the adulation.
“Everyone around me was jumping, screaming and celebrating – I’ve never experienced emotions like that before,” Ward added.
“Then standing in front of the crowd with the Scottish flag over my shoulders, just taking it all in, was incredible. Running around afterwards, giving people high-fives – it was completely surreal.”
Moore had looked like the contender most likely to deny Ward gold, but his slips during his floor routine cost him, and he fell behind Dolci into bronze.
Luke Whitehouse, arguably the pre-event favourite, scored an impressive 12.9 on the high bar, banishing any lingering demons from team-mate Gabriel Langton’s horror fall during the team event, but poor routines elsewhere saw him finish a lowly seventh.
Whitehouse has three individual finals to come, while Ward also faces the difficult task of coming back down to earth in time for his floor and pommel finals, with big hopes of building on his historic success.
“I’ve got big ambitions in both,” Ward added. “I’ll try to keep my head screwed on, perform the routines I know I’m capable of, and hopefully bring home another gold medal for Scotland.”
PA
