Coach D.Oyuntuya has a knack for spotting talent, and two of her proteges have gone on to make their mark on the national gymnastics team, competing on the continental and world stage and making Mongolia proud. One of them, E.Usukhbayar, has trained under her wing for years, and last spring he finally got his shot at the big leagues. He kicked things off with a ninth-place finish in the men’s floor exercise at the sixth stage of the World Cup in Varna, Bulgaria from May 7 to 10. From there, he headed to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for the seventh stage (May 21 to 24), where he raised his game to crack the top five. Then, at the Asian Championships in Guizhou Province, China, held from June 18 to 28, he clinched sixth place in the vault, punching his ticket to the World Championships kicking off October 17 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. We caught up with him as he gears up for the 20th Asian Games (Aichi-Nagoya 2026), set to open in Japan on October 19.
With the team sports competitions already underway at the Asian Games, when will you and your team leave for Japan?
We’re off to Japan next Tuesday. Artistic gymnastics is made up of six apparatus events, and since Mongolian athletes stand a strong chance in floor exercise and vault, that’s where we’re putting our focus, sharpening both difficulty and execution. The national team has recently started bringing a domestic judge along to international competitions, and international judge A.Enkhtulga will be officiating at this event. During competition, judges and coaches work closely with athletes, offering guidance to help them steer clear of costly mistakes. We really felt the benefit of having an international judge on hand at the competition in Tashkent, Uzbekistan last spring. After the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games, we’ll put our skills to the test at the World Championships.
Our athletes have already started qualifying for the finals in events like floor exercise, pommel horse, vault and horizontal bar. How many events will you be competing in at the Asian Games?
We’ll be competing in all six artistic gymnastics events at the Asian Games, and right now our training is geared toward the athletes we’ll be up against from other countries. Since the Games are being held in Japan, we can expect Olympic medalists in the field. After joining the national team in 2023, I represented the country at the World Cup and the Asian Championships, placing fifth in both floor exercise and vault. I’m always pushing to refine my elements and execution beyond where they’ve been before, there’s always more to learn. Years of practice make the techniques second nature. At one point, I had to stop training altogether while recovering from an injury, yet a year later I picked my old techniques right back up without missing a beat. That’s when it really hit me just how much the hard work, thousands upon thousands of repetitions, had paid off. It took 15 years to get here. I’m the youngest of four children, and the only one in my family who ever went into sports, there isn’t an athlete anywhere in my parents’ line. My family always tells me, “We’d love to come watch you compete at an international tournament.”
Since May, you’ve competed in a series of back-to-back events, turning the time you sat out last year into success in 2026, a fact you’ve already demonstrated through your World Cup series results. How have you managed to bounce back so strongly?
I sat out every event last year because of an injury, and during the first two legs of this year’s World Cup series, I wasn’t happy with how I executed my elements. Now that I’ve recovered and my physical condition is back on track, I’m looking to compete with confidence and show everyone this is a real comeback. I finished ninth at the World Cup in Bulgaria, but at the next leg I made it to the floor exercise final and came away with fifth place. My teammate D.Enkhtuvshin brought home a bronze medal from the Asian Championships, while I placed sixth in the vault, which was enough to qualify for the World Championships in the Netherlands next month. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the coach who got me there, meeting the qualification standard for Rotterdam against continental champions was no small feat. Before 2020, Mongolia didn’t have a team at the World Championships at all, but thanks to the tireless efforts of our coaches and athletes, we’ve been earning our spot at the event ever since.
In the past, our athletes would often feel intimidated and nervous competing in major tournaments, which led to quite a few mistakes. Now, having learned from those experiences, they’ve sharpened their skills and built much greater mental resilience, right?
Yes, I’d agree that I’ve learned from all my mistakes and shortcomings, and I feel mentally prepared now. When I compete abroad, I’m well aware that the responsibility on my shoulders isn’t just for myself, but for my country. Continental championships are a different beast from the World Championships, but Asian athletes are formidable rivals to Europe’s elite. With so many of the top medalists hailing from Asian nations, there’s a real chance we’ll see new champions emerge across several artistic gymnastics events at these Games. Japanese and Chinese gymnasts, in particular, are known for the sheer cleanliness of their execution. The Philippines, too, boasts an Olympic champion: Carlos Yulo took gold in both the floor exercise and vault at the Paris 2024 Olympics. In doing so, he became the country’s second Olympic champion and its first-ever double gold medalist, cementing his place in the history books for Southeast Asian artistic gymnastics. Where many athletes tend to slip up on high-difficulty elements, he’s renowned for pulling them off flawlessly. I still remember the thrill of watching him win his Olympic medal on TV. He’ll be competing at the World Championships after the Asian Games, and since we’ve crossed paths at plenty of international competitions, we know each other well.
The rivalry between Italian and Russian athletes shows just how far the sport has developed, and it’s rare for the Russian team to come home from a World Championship or the Olympics without a medal. How do you see that rivalry shaping the competition at this year’s World Championships?
Russian gymnasts show their superiority through sheer fundamentals and technique whenever they compete. Their men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics teams topped the podium and brought home gold from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Now that their eligibility has been restored after missing the Paris Olympics, this World Championship is shaping up to be an intense, closely-fought contest. I’ve also built friendships with athletes from Serbia and Malaysia, and we often chat about competitions and everyday life. I’m about to head to the Netherlands for the second time to compete at the World Championships. I trained there for a few days once before, with fellow athletes, after competing at the World Championships in Belgium.
It turns out that most gymnasts retire at a young age, an age when athletes in some other sports would still be going strong. Have you given any thought to how much longer you’d like to keep competing?
An athlete who’s been competing for years brings a wealth of experience to the table, but nailing elements to perfection gets harder compared with the young talent bursting onto the scene. Since technical mastery is typically reached between the ages of 24 and 27, that’s the window when an athlete hits their peak. I started this sport at nine, a bit later than most of my peers, but since I was small for my age, I think that helped me catch up without falling too far behind. In some sports, that age would just be the starting line, but in gymnastics, it’s when athletes hit their stride.
I was picked for the team when my coach, D.Oyuntuya, came scouting for talent at Chingeltei District’s General Education School No. 57. I still remember walking into the gym, having no clue what gymnastics even was, and watching the athletes train, thinking to myself, “So people in Mongolia really can do this.” I’m the same age as D.Enkhtuvshin, a national team athlete and International Master of Sports, we went to the same school, just different classes. Beyond the two of us, the school has produced other well-known athletes, including P.Serdamba, a silver medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a Hero of Labor, and E.Tsendbaatar, an Asian champion, World Championship bronze medalist and Honored Athlete. The story goes that E.Tsendbaatar decided to take up the sport after watching P.Serdamba, a fellow alumnus of the school, compete at the Olympics. Following in his schoolmate’s footsteps, E.Tsendbaatar has gone on to become a continental champion, a world medalist and a professional titleholder.
Could you share your memories of becoming a student of Coach D.Oyuntuya, and of your first taste of international competition? As far as I know, you started competing internationally in 2015, moved up to the continental level in 2018, and made your World Championships debut in 2023.
I sometimes smile now when I think back on my first Asian Championship. Going up against the best athletes my age at such a major continental event left me intimidated and nervous, and I came away without any success to show for it. That defeat taught me a valuable lesson, though, it stuck with me as a reminder of that poor performance every time I stepped into future competitions. It weighed on me, and honestly left me pretty disheartened, coming home empty-handed after my parents had covered the costs, money that cut straight into the family budget.
Every athlete has their time to shine. I don’t see defeat as a bad thing, I see it as a powerful catalyst for self-improvement. It’s tough at the moment, but it ultimately gives me the energy and mental resilience to bounce back. It sharpens my resolve, builds endurance, teaches me to learn from my opponents, and drives me to hone my skills for the next competition. My parents’ support and my coach’s encouraging, empowering advice were what kept me moving forward and left those hard moments behind me. If no one had understood me, I would have walked away from this sport altogether.
Back when you were competing in past World Cup series events, did you ever imagine you’d make it to the final eight?
Yes, this was a dream I’d carried in my heart for years. I desperately wanted to reach the final eight in the 2024 World Cup series, and I worked incredibly hard to get there. When I finally made it through sheer effort, a flood of thoughts and emotions washed over me. Getting to that point meant riding out plenty of ups and downs, falling and getting back up again, time after time, and no shortage of injuries along the way. It took real mental strength to push through moments that tested me to breaking point, moments that even had me considering walking away from the sport I love. Had I not faced such tough obstacles, I doubt I’d be the athlete I am today. My journey, training as a professional gymnast, representing Mongolia, competing on the continental and world stage, is inseparable from my coach’s dedication, tireless hard work, and commitment. That’s something the sports community recognizes, and so does the audience.
Rhythmic gymnasts also train alongside artistic gymnasts in the same gymnastics hall. I wonder whether any real results could be achieved with so many athletes training in a cold, uncomfortable space, surrounded by worn-out, dilapidated equipment. How have you managed to achieve such strong results despite these conditions?
The rhythmic gymnastics athletes have now started training separately from us. It’s true that the gym gets cold in winter, and the training equipment has really gone downhill in quality. There’s a noticeable gap, for instance, between what the national team trains on here and what we compete on internationally. With conditions like these, it’s tough to push the difficulty level of our routines any higher. We keep striving to improve, but we’re constantly running up against these kinds of obstacles. If government officials stepped in to upgrade the equipment and the training environment, it wouldn’t just benefit us, it would help the younger athletes coming up behind us, too. There’s talk right now of setting up joint training sessions for the national team in China and Turkey starting next year.
You’ve traveled to quite a few countries for competitions. Which one left such a pleasant impression that you’d love to visit again?
Among Asian countries, Japan left a particularly favorable impression on me. Before visiting France, I’d long dreamed of seeing the Eiffel Tower, and finally seeing it in person was a truly magnificent experience, one that’s honestly hard to put into words. I was also deeply moved visiting Egypt for an international competition and seeing the pyramids, ancient wonders whose mysteries remain unsolved to this day. Through competing in all these different places, I’ve gradually learned to adapt to whatever conditions a country throws at me.
Mongolian athletes tend to adjust to local climate and weather quickly, which works in our favor during competitions. Athletes from other countries often show up a week or 10 days early to acclimatize, yet they still frequently look worn out from jet lag by the time competition rolls around. Our athletes, on the other hand, can arrive just three days before the event and compete without any real issues. That said, enduring hot, humid conditions for long stretches is tough on us, given that we’re used to a climate on the extreme cold end of the spectrum.
