David Belyavski - 'cat-like flexibility in the style of Kohei Uchimura'

David Belyavski, 22 years old, has long promised a gold medal in a major all around competition.  The 2012 and 2013 Russian national champion is set in the classical mould of Alexei Nemov and Vladimir Artemov.  Now chief coach of the Russian team, Valery Alfosov, is comparing him to the highly respected Olympic Champion, Kohei Uchimura.  

Belyavski performed with consistency and elegance to take the gold medal in this Friday's all around final, and promises much more.  The emotional intensity of his performance was impressive as he went head to head with the richest competitive field men's European all around gymnastics has seen in a long time.   

David trains at the Dynamo Club in Yekaterinburg with coach Viktor Lomaev, and at Russian national championships competes for the Siberian men's team that contributes so much to the national scene.  An interview with Valery Alfosov appeared in yesterday's edition of Sovietski Sport.

The senior men's national team coach Valery Alfosov compared David to Olympic Champion Kohei Uchimura, describing him as having the 'flexibility of a cat'. 

'With David, we always fight for a medal', he said, 'And today it all came together so that he became a champion of Europe.  The turning point came in the penultimate apparatus, the pommel horse.  Psychologically, it's quite difficult.  And after David completed his pommel exercise, he could progress to the rings exercises in a better state of mind.
David is not renowned for his rings work - people point out that he needs to learn to do a cross.  But really, David's abilities are pretty evenly matched across the apparatus - he just needs to close some of the gaps to be more competitive at the world level.  I cannot at the present moment in time promise that David will be able to compete for the all around title in Rio, but I can say that we will work hard to strengthen his programme and to raise his start values on his weaker apparatus.  His parallel bars has a number of strong elements which are ready to use in competition, but a classy all arounder should have at least two 'shock' pieces of apparatus to give an immediate advantage over his closest rivals.
David seems very calm and at the same cat-cautious.  He will never take up a complex element if he does not feel completely confident with it.  If you do not feel - do not force it.  And his cat's flexibility makes me want to put him on a par with the best Chinese and Japanese. There are similarities in this regard with Uchimura.  His calmness impressed me.  He knows how to manage his nerves.  He has never before had such a victory as today,  but he has always performed well for the team, even when others were nervous. I noticed it in the youth championships of Russia.  There, I saw a flexible guy, very acrobatic ...
David was an orphan, raised by his grandparents, and he grew up in a boarding school.   He lived in Votkinsk, 150 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. He lost his parents early, I do not know under what circumstances it happened ...  Soon after, he found himself in a sports school in Yekaterinburg.  He did gymnastics, visiting his grandmother.'