PARIS — At René Cournoyer’s second Olympics, the emotions are higher and “so much more enjoyable.”
Three years after he made his Olympic debut in Tokyo as the lone Canadian competing in men’s artistic gymnastics, Cournoyer is part of a five-person team, the first Canada has qualified for the event since the 2008 Beijing Games.
“The energy and having people supporting you makes a huge difference for the competition,” he said from Paris’ Bercy Arena following the first of three rounds of men’s qualification on the opening day of Olympic competition. “If anything goes wrong at any point, you know you have your teammates supporting you and ready to back you up. If things go right, then they — on top of the whole crowd of the stadium supporting you — are cheering you on.”
Canada was one of four teams to compete in the first of three subdivisions in qualifying Saturday, scoring 247.794 points across the six apparatus that make up men’s artistic gymnastics (floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar). It was more than a point shy of the 249.260 points the team scored at the 2023 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships last year to secure their team spot in Paris.
Gymnastics opens with a qualifying event that decides what athletes move on to the all-around and individual apparatus finals as well as the team final. The top 24 athletes who compete in all events advance to the all-around final, where scoring is reset, while the top eight gymnasts on each apparatus move on to those finals (with a limit on two athletes per country).
Twelve countries face off in team competition, where four of five athletes compete and the top three scores are registered. The eight teams with the most points advance to the final where scoring resets.
Cournoyer, who finished 55th in all-around qualifying rounds in Tokyo, has said his objective this year is to help his team qualify for the team final. “That would be the absolute goal,” he told media Wednesday.
Canada was sitting in third of four teams after the first subdivision Saturday afternoon, behind Great Britain and the United States. The gymnastic powerhouses of China and Japan were scheduled to compete in the second subdivision set to begin at 3:30 p.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET).
And Cournoyer is certainly pulling his weight; despite opting out of some apparatus in training earlier this week to out of concern for pain in his calf, he competed and scored in all six events. Teammates Félix Dolci and Samuel Zakutney also competed in all events, with Dolci — who took gold in the all-around competition at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games — leading Canadians in all-around scorings with 81.498 points (ranking seventh of 14 competitors after the first subdivision).
While it was too early to say Saturday afternoon if Canada would advance to the team finals, Cournoyer said he hoped the presence of a Canadian team at the Olympics would help men’s artistic gymnastics capitalize on the growth and momentum it has seen in recent years.
“I think it’s going to inspire a lot of kids to do the same thing in the future,” he said.
“It’s huge, it’s incredible the difference. When I grew up, I looked at Kyle Shewfelt, the superstar of gymnastics (who won gold at the 2004 Athens Games, which remains Canada’s only Olympic gymnastics medal). Nowadays, it’s going to be oh, I’ve seen Felix Dolci, Rene Cournoyer, William Émard on the Olympics so it’s going to change the narrative a little bit because now the superstars are an actuality, they are not old gymnasts from the past. So I think that’s going to make a huge difference because the younger athletes are going to be able to relate more.”