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Gymnastics: Mah aims high at Pacific Rim Championships

Vancouver Phoenix gymnast Aaron Mah embraces difficulty of "beautiful sport."

When Aaron Mah debuts a new high bar routine at the Pacific Rim Championships this weekend in Richmond, his will be the most difficult ever attempted by a Canadian junior gymnast.   

“It’s up there with the best juniors in the world,” he said Thursday before the men’s all-round competition began in the evening at the Richmond Oval.

The international meet is the largest so far for Mah, the most successful male gymnast in the 45-year history of the Vancouver Phoenix gymnastics club, and the routine has been in the works for several months.

“I have a lot of combinations and hard skills. I’ve been working hard,” he said.

The routine’s high difficulty of 5.4 is based on demanding technical elements, many named for the sport’s innovators and risk-takers, including a Takamodo half, which connects into a Tkachev release, as well as does two more releases, a Yamawaki and a second Tkached, this one a half release.

“It’s pretty tricky,” said Mah, 16. “It’s going to be my routing for a while until I move up to senior.”

The national men’s coach, Tony Smith, persuaded Canadian athletes to step up the difficulty of their routines, and Mah accepted the challenge.

“He’s been really pushing us to add difficulty because this is what you need to compete with the rest of the world,” said the Grade 11 Magee student. He placed fourth all around at the 2013 Canadian championships and won gold in the parallel bars and high bar.

At Phoenix, Mah trains with a coach who arrived in Vancouver with impressive international credibility. Sasha Pozdniakov competed in Russia, but as a coach he taught athletes in that country who later won gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Under his guidance, athletes in New Zealand won national and international competitions.

Pozdniakov moved to Vancouver in 2010 to coach the boys program at Phoenix and has since helped two athletes, including Mah, reach the national team in their age group. He has said his favourite thing about coaching is watching young boys grow into strong men.

With Pozdniakov, Mah has room to experiment and the encouragement to work hard.

“He’s really supportive […] and usually gives me freedom to create my own routines. The difficult one he’ll attempt this weekend came together one day at practice, spontaneously,” said Mah, who trains about 25 hours a week.

“We didn’t have it down on paper. I did it one day just for fun. He thought it was fantastic.”

Mah has posted videos of his training on Instagram and found that the clips are popular with his friends. He’s testing himself and the video will be analyzed so he can see what is and isn’t working.

They’re mesmerizing and not because they’re pretty. In one, he spins erratically off the high bar. On the video, he posted #bailoftheday.

“I’ve had numerous comments, ‘Wow, I love to see you fall!’ I don’t like to see it,” he said. “I like to see skills hit well with nice, clean form. Gymnastics is a beautiful sport. I like to see it done well.”

mstewart@vancourier.com

Twitter.com/MHStewart