It all started with the bar. The device with the high, parallel wooden bars has always been of interest to very few students in physical education lessons, who are already in the ball phase. But the parallel bars are actually a great piece of sports equipment, at least if you’re as into it as Lukas Dauser was back then.
He had the right prerequisites for a gymnast, the dimensions of his arms and legs were right, and he soon had enough support in his arms, which is the prerequisite for almost all gymnastics equipment. Finally, there was the right coach, Kurt Szilier, who had already introduced Marcel Nguyen to the world of gymnastics. He opened the world of gymnastics to his students by training them on parallel bars at an early age. On the device that contains almost everything that constitutes gymnastics.
Now Lukas Dauser from Unterhaching is world champion. On Sunday evening he completed his long journey from youth to his first big success at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp. He did a double somersault as a dismount, then he stood next to the apparatus and for a short time became another Dauser as he remained on the floor. After he realized that the path was now over, he got a flag and left his calm and orderly demeanor behind him.
Dauser knew immediately: no one would take this victory away from him
The effort, the many repetitions of almost always the same exercise over around five years, the disappointments, the new motivation and further disappointments, all of this now seemed to be falling away from Dauser. “I don’t think there is such a thing as perfect. But I strive for it, and today was close to the limit,” he said later. He clenched both gymnast’s biceps and urged the audience on again with his arms flailing, not to make noise to convince the jury to give him a better grade, but simply out of joy. Dauser knew that even the last of the eight final gymnasts, who was still waiting, could no longer take this success away from him.
Gymnastics is also arithmetic, the exercises are designed and improved over the years, not only in execution and elegance, but also in value. Anyone who has a bit of experience watching gymnastics will notice that Dauser’s parallel bars presentation is different. His exercise is less a series of somersaults and other aerial elements than an upside down routine on the bars; a performance that won’t leave a layperson’s mouth agape, like a double somersault with a half turn over the bar, but which is a delight for experts.
Dauser’s presentation brought him a gold medal, the first for the German Gymnastics Federation since 2007, when Fabian Hambüchen from Wetzlar became world champion in Stuttgart. In a sport in which such great moments are rare, the question immediately arises as to what consequences this gold could have, after all, Hambüchen’s victory was followed by a longer period of German gymnastics success. A kind of team was formed on the horizontal bar, many colleagues loved this highest device even by meters, Hambüchen and Philipp Boy from Cottbus came together for fruitful duels. The highlight of this time was Hambüchen’s high bar victory at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The hard upper arm landings were disruptive – that’s how Dauser’s extravagant show came about
Specifically, after Dauser’s big day, the question arises whether his gold bars will trigger a similar wave of entries into gymnastics clubs. There are enough of them. There is gymnastics in almost every small town in this country, and it is not uncommon for talents to be discovered early on within well-structured large clubs and the right department is recommended to them. But the biggest argument for a new upswing is pure success. A medal like this can certainly motivate girls and boys who are gymnasts today, provided they have the talent.
Lukas Dauser is already world champion and his next goals are clear: Paris 2024 and the Olympic Games.
(Photo: Geert vanden Wijngaert/AP)
Dauser also had the talent and he always had the ambition. When he recognized the parallel bars as his best piece of equipment, he initially – like Hambüchen – focused on aerial acrobatics. However, the bar statutes changed, and anyone who had a heavier body, similar to Dauser, whose air show with an upper arm landing on the bars made too much of a noise, would now receive deductions. This led to Dauser presenting this extravagant, confusing, but ultimately fascinating and difficult exercise.
Put into words, Dauser’s difficult passages include, among other things, a giant rim into the handstand, an upper arm diamidow, a forward swing followed by a back swing into the handstand, a tsolakidis, a support turn and much more. The exercise is long, the many twists and turns, the confusing holds and changes of direction almost without a break give an idea of how difficult such a presentation is.
Now he’s looking forward to being home, on the couch and seeing the medal
But Dauser, who also enjoys gymnastics on the horizontal bars, has found a kind of friend with his parallel bars presentation. The time when he was still overwhelmed is over. The two had their crisis last year at the European Championships in Munich when Dauser made a mistake in qualifying and missed the final. And the Chinese Zou Jingyuan, who recently defeated him twice at the big events and was not there this time, also has to ask himself whether he would have surpassed Dauser’s practice. She was ultimately rewarded with 15,400 points, which is about 5-0 in soccer.
And yet it probably won’t trigger a big run on the gyms. His exercise is too special and there are not enough people who find out about this extravagant sport on the Internet. The team spirit had already awakened in the German team before its triumph, and after Andreas Toba’s injury at the latest, this quartet had a mission and could no longer be stopped.
In any case, Dauser and his team have their next goal: the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. “The boy really deserves it because he works so professionally,” says his trainer Hubert Brylok from the base in Halle. The time after that has not yet been planned with certainty. The only thing that is clear, says Dauser, is that he is looking forward to “being able to sit on the couch with my medal around my neck.” In fact, he has considered retiring after successful games, but who knows: maybe the friendship with his parallel bars practice will continue now that the duo has really come together.