Rhys McClenaghan

Rhys Joshua McClenaghan (born 21 July 1999) is a Northern Irish artistic gymnast competing internationally for both Ireland and Northern Ireland. A specialist on pommel horse, he is recognised as one of the best pommel workers of his generation. He is a double world champion on the pommel horse, having won gold in 2022 and 2023, the first Irish artistic gymnast ever to win world championship gold. In 2019, he became the first Irish gymnast to qualify to a world championships final and to also win a medal, taking bronze on pommel horse.

He is a three-time European champion and a Commonwealth Games champion on the same apparatus. McClenaghan is the first Irish gymnast to compete in a European final and also the first to win a European medal.

He also competed for Northern Ireland at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, winning the gold medal on the pommel horse. He followed this by winning the 2018 European Championships, pipping the reigning Olympic and two-time world champion, Max Whitlock on both occasions. In 2023, McClenaghan won a second European title and retained the world title. His third European crown came in Rimini in 2024.

He was named RTÉ's Sportsperson of the Year for 2023.

Biography and career
McClenaghan was born in Newtownards, County Down, to Tracy and Danny McClenaghan. He is coached by Luke Carson.

When still technically a junior, he won the bronze medal in the 2016 British Artistic Gymnastics Championships pommel horse final behind Olympic medalists Louis Smith and Whitlock. McClenaghan also won Ireland's first European Championships medal, earning silver on the pommel horse at the 2016 Junior European Gymnastics Championship.

At the 2018 Commonwealth Games held at the Gold Coast, Australia, McClenaghan won gold on the pommel horse, beating reigning world and Olympic champion Whitlock by dint of higher execution score, after tying on overall scores. It was Northern Ireland's first medal for an artistic gymnast at the Commonwealth Games. At the 2018 European Championships, McClenaghan won the gold medal and became Ireland's first-ever European champion.

McClenaghan formerly trained at Rathgael Gymnastics Club in Bangor until his coach was made redundant in June 2018. McClenaghan was forced to train in his back garden. He then relocated to Dublin, upon receiving funding and accommodation from Gymnastics Ireland and Sport Ireland to train in the Sport Ireland Institute in Abbotstown.

In October 2019, he won Ireland’s first World Championship medal, bronze on the pommel horse, making him the most decorated Irish gymnast of all time.

McClenaghan was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to gymnastics.

McClenaghan competed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where he came in seventh place in the men's pommel horse final.

In 2022 McClenaghan, along with fellow gymnasts Eamon Montgomery and Ewan McAteer, was banned from competing for Northern Ireland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) as he had previously competed internationally for Ireland. The FIG suggested the trio should renounce their Irish nationality on their gymnastics licences, or that the Commonwealth Games Federation remove the relevant event from that summer's Games programme. The decision was met with backlash from politicians including Brandon Lewis, Deirdre Hargey and Leo Varadkar, as well as from Commonwealth Games NI, which accused the FIG of "completely disregarding" the Good Friday Agreement (which recognised the right of Northern Irish people to be both British and Irish (McClenaghan had competed regularly at both the British and the Irish national championships.). The trio were ultimately given special dispensation by the FIG allowing them to compete in Birmingham.

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