It took a long time. From the time he decided to use this heavy equipment, which can hurt a gymnast, until today: This gymnast learned the discipline on the wooden bars for many years – first as a student under his first home coach Kurt Szilier in Unterhaching, then from 2020 also with the trainers at his next station at the gymnastics base in Berlin with the national trainers Andreas Hirsch and his successor Valeri Belenki. Now Lukas Dauser has reached his goal.
On Sunday evening, shortly before the end of this World Championships in Antwerp, he left everyone behind and now has a gold medal in his pocket. 15,400 points are the reason for this and a significant lead over the next best, the Chinese Shi Cong (China, 15,066) and the third-placed Japanese Kaito Sugimoto (15,000). His teammate Pauline Schäfer-Betz, on the other hand, who had also hoped for a place on the podium, had recently made a mistake that suddenly caused her to fall out of the medal ranks. Early in her routine, she stumbled after a straddle jump when she put one foot too far to the left on the beam. Although she didn’t have to dismount due to the mishap, her hopes were gone as the deductions were too great. She did the rest well, but it was just politeness to the audience; In the end, Schäfer-Betz was eighth.
Lukas Dauser’s starting point was completely different. He had made it clear that despite his respect for this often unpredictable sport, he was aiming for the gold medal. Because it was actually clear from the start that he could only beat himself with a mistake, like what happened to him at the 2022 European Championships in Munich. An exercise like Dauser’s requires a long time to train and refine, which requires a lot of training discipline. But when the gymnastics student is finished with it and has gone through the exercise in his dreams long enough, then it is difficult to defeat him.
It’s quite possible that something similar will happen to Dauser at the Olympics
Now, in Antwerp, he has brought together the ideal conditions with an ideal form for the first time. His previous sports rival, the Chinese Zou Jingyuan, was at another major event, the Asian Games, and Dauser’s art was perfect that evening. He performed all the difficulties with ease: the confusing twists and turns in the handstand, the difficult changes of grips where one can easily lose one’s balance, and finally he managed to cleanly dismount from this apparatus with a double somersault.
He then remained there, next to the spars, for a brief moment. It was just the second when an athlete, after great effort, tries to understand this great moment. “It will take me a long time to realize that,” he said sometime later. But first, while still in the hall, Lukas Dauser raised his arms and released the tension from his body. He worked for this moment for years, always having to postpone it until the next year, and again.
So he grabbed his flag and jumped for joy, ran in front of the fans, showed them his fist and screamed himself a little hoarse. Everything that this otherwise quiet gymnast doesn’t actually do. It is quite possible that something similar could happen to him at the Olympics next year and that he will once again come out of the competition as the best with this exercise if the competition does not catch up in the elements and difficulties.
But now it seems as if Lukas Dauser from Unterhaching has this complicated device, the bar, on his side.