Max Whitlock, the first and so far only British gymnast to win an Olympic gold medal, plans to make Paris his fourth and final Games, should he make the team.
“I have decided that… After a 24-year career, Paris will be my final Olympic Games,” was posted on the 31-year-old Whitlock’s social media. “I can’t wait to give it my all in this final chapter of my career.”
Whitlock’s six total medals are a British Olympic gymnastics record.
He won the last two Olympic pommel horse gold medals and added floor exercise gold in 2016. HIs first medals came at home in London in 2012 -- bronze in the team event and on pommel horse. He was also the all-around bronze medalist in 2016.
Whitlock took a break after the Tokyo Games, missing the world championships in 2021 and 2022, then returned at the 2023 Worlds, placing fourth with the British men’s team and fifth on pommel horse.
He won at least one medal at every Olympics and world championships from 2012 through Tokyo.
Should he make the Olympic team, he can bid to become the second gymnast to win the same individual event three times after Larisa Latynina, who won floor exercise gold in 1956, 1960 and 1964 for the Soviet Union.
He can also become the first artistic gymnast to win four medals in one event.
