Nikita Nagornyy

Personal life

Nagornyy has a Youtube account, and enjoys making youtube vlogs in his leisure time. His grandmother is his inspiration whom was tasked with disciplining him, took him to a gymnastics club where one of her friends worked as a coach. Nagornyy has a Spanish language tattoo on his ribs reading "salvame y guardame" (save and protect me), a reference to a common Russian Orthodox phrase.

Career

Nagornyy began gymnastics at age 6 under the encouragement of his grandmother. His favorite gymnast and idol is Alexei Nemov.

Junior

Nagornyy was bronze medalist in all-around at the 2014 Russian Championships. Nagornyy was member of the Russian Team that won silver medal at the 2014 European Junior Championships, he qualified for the vault finals and won the gold medal.

Nagornyy was selected to represent Russia in men's gymnastics at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China. He won the all-around silver medal behind Britain's Giarnni Regini-Moran. Nagornyy was the only gymnast to qualify to all 6 event finals. He won gold in (rings, pommel horse, parallel bars), bronze medal in vault, 4th in floor exercise and 8th after a fall on horizontal bars. Nagornyy was the most decorated male artistic gymnast at this Youth Olympics Game with a total of three gold, one silver, and one bronze medal.

2015

Nagornyy's first year as a senior gymnast was 2015. At the 2015 Russian National Championships, his team finished in 4th, and he finished 5th in the all-around. In the event finals, he tied for gold with Denis Ablyazin on both floor and vault and won bronze on parallel bars and high bar. He was then selected to compete floor and vault at the 2015 European Championships.

Nagornyy qualified first for the vault final at the 2015 European Championships with a 15.050. However, he only finished 41st in the floor qualifications with a 14.100 due to a near-fall and several steps out of bounds. In the vault final, he won the European title with a 15.099. His teammate, Denis Ablyazin, was only 0.016 behind him.

At the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow Nagornyy competed floor and vault in the Team Final to contribute to the Russian Team's 4th-place finish.

2016

At the 2016 Russian National Championships Nagornyy's Team placed 3rd, winning the bronze medal. In the All Around Nagornyy was in 3rd place after the first day with a score of 89.033. On the second day he placed second with a score of 89.166 to give him a combined score of 178.199 which won him the silver medal behind Nikolai Kuksenkov and ahead of former National and European Champion David Belyavskiy. In event finals he won gold on floor ahead of 2014 World Champion Denis Ablyazin and also won silver medals on vault, rings and parallel bars.

Nagornyy was part of the Russia team for the 2016 European Championships. In qualifications he competed on every event except high bar, helping Russia to qualify in first place for the Team Final and qualifying to 3 Event Finals: Floor, Vault and Parallel Bars. In Team finals he again competed on 5 events, helping the team to win gold with a score of 271.378, nearly 3 points ahead of Great Britain. In Event Finals he became European Champion on Floor with a score of 15.566, also placing 6th in the Vault final with an average of 14.916 after a mistake on his second vault, and 7th in the Parallel Bars final with a score of 14.100 after a fall.

On August 6-16, Nagornyy competed with the Russian Team (together with Ivan Stretovich, Denis Ablyazin, Nikolai Kuksenkov and David Belyavskiy) at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he contributed scores of 15.000 in floor, 14.866 in rings, 15.400 vault; helping the Russian men's team win the silver medal with a total of 271.453 points. Nagornyy also qualified in the vault finals where he finished in 5th place.

2017

Due to a foot injury from the end of 2016, Nagornyy did not compete in the All Around at 2017 Russian National Championships. He competed on 4 events- Pommel Horse, Rings, Parallel Bars and High Bar. He won the national Parallel Bars title with a score of 15.066. Nagornyy also placed 7th in the Pommel Horse Final and 4th in the High Bar final, after falls on both events. At the 2017 European Championships, not fully healed from the injury; Nagornyy did not compete in the all-around. He qualified in 1 apparatus final and won a bronze in Parallel Bars. Nagornyy won the all-around at the Russian Cup held in Ekaterinburg beating hometown competitor David Belyavskiy. In the Apparatus Finals, he qualified in 5 out of 6 events winning 2 gold medals in Floor Exercise and Vault (tied with Artur Dalaloyan) and 3 bronze medals in Pommel Horse, Rings and High Bar.