MONTREAL — Those 100 seconds in Rio had to be agonizing for Oleg Verniaiev.
The Ukrainian gymnast, after taking a critical step on his high bar dismount, waited and waited as judges tabulated his score for the final event of the Olympic all-around last year.
The crowd could have chewed nails wondering if Verniaiev would end Kohei Uchimura‘s seven-year reign atop the sport.
Turns out, Verniaiev wasn’t as optimistic.
“I knew that I will be the second [place], but still I had hope,” Verniaiev remembered in an interview Monday, via translator.