ROTTERDAM -- After the European Championships in Birmingham earlier this year, I had a brief opportunity to chat with Dutch star Epke Zonderland, who had just won the silver medal on high bar behind Greece's Vlasios Maras.
"I just hope that during the World Championships in Rotterdam I will have a great routine," the man with the best hair in gymnastics told me at the time. "It doesn't really matter if I come in first or second, I can be happy when I do a perfect routine and well, we'll see what medal I can get."
He did a near perfect routine in Rotterdam after receiving a generous score in the qualifying round. And even though he only wound up second behind China's Zhang Chenglong in front of a home crowd that included the crown prince of the Netherlands, Zonderland's remarks in April would indicate that he is satisfied with his performance, even after a little initial disappointment.
"After the World Championships [in 2009, where he also won silver on high bar], there was more pressure," Zonderland said. "People, they expect that I will get medals, but in gymnastics you cannot be sure to get a medal because it's very hard to do your routine perfectly all the time, and especially on high bar you can fall down and make a big mistake, and then you lose the medal."
Zonderland, who studies medicine at the University of Groningen in the northern part of the Netherlands, initially hoped to attend university in the United States and compete for an NCAA program, but did not meet eligibility requirements because he has accepted money in the Netherlands to support his training. He did, however, benefit from a stint training with U.S. high bar star Jonathan Horton in Houston, Texas after the London Worlds.
"After World Championships I just wanted to go somewhere to imprive my skills and to be someplace new and to get motivated, and I hoped also to learn from Jonathan and to have a good time. So that was my motivation," Zonderland said. "And well, for sure it was a good time, and it was definitely motivating, because Jonathan works very hard and you could see him practice every day. So it was motivating for me becasue then I realized that I also have to work hard in order to get medals in the future!"
Note: The Dutch junior men were fairly impressive at the Junior European Championships, and Zonderland said that the Dutch are hopeful of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics. "It's quite difficult, but there is a big goal of the Dutch team, and that is to get to the top 12 countries in the World, because in that way we can qualify for the Olympics as a team. And we know at this moment it's a very long way away, but with some juniors coming up and the team we have now there is some potential, so that's a big goal of ours," he said.
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