NI gymnastics star Rhys McClenaghan: I am not scared to say I am aiming for gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics

When, as a teenager, he won a first gold medal for Ireland in gymnastics he promised it was only the beginning –and how right he was.

McClenaghan, who competes internationally for both Northern Ireland and Ireland, is now a champion many times over – most recently claiming European gold last month in Turkey.

“I was very happy with the recent European Championships result, “ he says. “ But I feel like my performance could have gone a lot better, but that’s just maybe the critical side of me. The fact that I can not do my best performance and walk away as a European Champion for the second time is a good indication of where I am in this game and I just want to keep progressing more and more ever single competition."

He is also “not scared” to say he is aiming for gold in the Paris Olympics 2024.

"I am not saying that I will without a doubt, 100 per cent, win a gold medal, but I will do everything in my power that I can to go for that gold medal and I’m not scared to aim for that. Last year, or a couple of years ago, I would have happily said I’m going to try everything I can to win that World title and here I am now sitting here as a World champion, so hopefully the same thing will happen with that Olympic title."

Rhys McClenaghan has been involved in gymnastics since he was six-years-old.

"I was already doing gymnastics on a trampoline in the back garden, making things look quite dangerous, so my parents (Tracy and Danny) brought me to a gymnastics club because they thought it would be good way to teach me to land on my feet properly.”

McClenaghan attended Regent House Grammer School in Newtownards, but admits he wasn't a keen scholar.

"I wasn’t too academic, unlike my brother (Elliot) who is a straight A student. I really didn’t enjoy school too much. I think it was because I wasn’t learning anything about my interests, which was sport. I only really realised that when I left school and went to SERC college in Bangor and started doing Sports Studies and my grades started to get much better.”

In his younger days he did all six of the events in men’s gymnastics (floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, horizontal bar, and combined exercises) which, he said, tends to be the case with all gymnasts that go into the sport at a young age, but he always enjoyed the pommel horse much more than anyone else seemed to.

“I was progressing on it much quicker than everybody else in my group. But the real specialising of the apparatus, as we call it in gymnastics, came when I had surgery on my shoulder and the goal then switched to recovering from that surgery and qualifying for the Olympic games and my best chance to do that was on the pommel horse, so that’s where the focus came to it.”

Few sporting disciplines demand such high levels of physicality and technicality, coupled with the fact that the pommel horse is one of the hardest and most dangerous pieces of apparatus.

“The pommel horse has a risk of taking you by surprise, having a hand slip from under you all of a sudden, and the risk of cracking a rib on a handle, or breaking your fingers and there’s certainly a lot of stress on your upper body and wrists; it’s not natural and I guess it’s my job to try and make it look natural.”

McClenaghan had been based at Sports Ireland's National Gymnastics Training Centre in Dublin since 2018, but he’s now back home training at the new Origin Gymnastics centre in in the Blair Mayne Wellbeing & Leisure Complex in Newtownards opened by his coach Luke Carson.

"For the last five years I have been training full-time in Dublin. I’ve been away from friends, away from family and I’ve really had nothing else in my life apart from gymnastics. I feel like now is a nice chapter to, still of course focus all of my energy on gymnastics, but live life outside of gymnastics a little bit as well.”

So he must be local hero in the town? "Yeah, my friends and family are chuffed for me, but also the town of Newtownards is chuffed to have a high-level gymnastics facility and it couldn’t be in any better hands other than my coach Luke Carson, opening it up and achieving one of his life-long dreams. I’m glad to be the face of the brand and support him in any way I can and I am excited for the joy that young people will get coming through those doors at the gym.”

Back on home turf, the gymnastics star also has more time to spend with girlfriend of three years Emily, who, he says is “very supportive” of his career.

Outside of training, McClenaghan is currently renovating a house he bought in Bangor, with the help of his dad, a joiner,

"It’s a very old house and my dad and myself have challenged ourselves to put in the work and strip it all back and do it up ourselves. I’m enjoyed spending quality time with him.”

The pommel horse requires immeasurable core and upper-body strength, but it also requires unflinching motivation and the right mindset.

“It’s a battle in mind every day, getting up every morning and going to training and putting in 100 per cent effort in order to keep that up until the next big major championship. Every day is a learning curve in terms of my mental wellbeing.”

McClenaghan, who clinched Commonwealth Games gold in Australia in 2018 and is the most decorated Irish gymnast of all time, is keen to encourage youngsters to see the benefit sport has for their mental health, and it is for that reason that he’s involved in Lidl Northern Ireland’s Sport for Good Schools Programme,

“I think it’s important for kids to understand the benefit of why they are doing sport – and I feel like that is the message that Lidl is getting across with their Sport for Good programme. They are educating young people, as well as teachers and parents, about the importance of physical activity while you are still in school.”

McClenaghan has a number of prestigious honours under his belt, including a BEM which he was awarded in 2021, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, 2022, and he recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster.

“I’ve grown up watching Northern Ireland sporting greats getting honours, the likes of Carl Frampton and Jonathan Rea, people that I looked up to immensely. I feel like I’m following in their footsteps when I get hose same honours.”

After completing career he’d like to be involved in training the next generation of young gymnasts.

“I feel like it would almost be a waste of my life and years in gymnastics if I was to walk away from the sport altogether after my career. I’m already a qualified gymnastics coach, so I really look forward to when I get those opportunities to bring up a new generation of gymnasts that will hopefully go on to surpass all of my achievements.”

Thanks to Rhys McClenaghan Northern Irish and Irish gymnastics is now well and truly on the map.

“I didn’t have many gymnasts come before me, in fact, one of the only ones was my coach Luke, who was one of the few competing at a high level in the Commonwealth Games and World Championships. Now I am that guy that is becoming the first to win a Commonwealth medal, a World medal, a European medal and then hopefully soon an Olympic medial. I feel like that is an inspiring target for young people to look at and realise we can actually do this in this country – we might be a gymnastics nation.”