Ottawa gymnast Sam Zakutney making Olympic debut after overcoming serious injuries

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Growing up, 25-year-old Sam Zakutney was always the “student athlete,” balancing school and gymnastics.

After graduating from Penn State University with a degree in biomedical and mechanical engineering in 2020, he decided to make gymnastics his full-time job.

“Within the first few months of training in Montreal, where I moved, I ended up blowing out my knee on floor, tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and my meniscus,” Zakutney said. “There was nothing really to fall back on to take my mind off of it. It was just a pretty low point.”

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After doing lots of rehab, strength training and physio in Montreal, Zakutney was back in shape by May 2023, but then he tore his left pectoralis major muscle while doing an iron cross on the rings just before the start of a competition at the 2023 Pan-Am championships in Colombia.

“That was our qualification to head to worlds in Belgium last year,” Zakutney said. “That kind of bummed me out again because that was the worlds, to which the guys ended up qualifying a team to the (Olympic) Games. That was kind of my big drive, if you will, to be part of that team and, unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”

According to the Canadian Olympic Committee, Canada qualified the team for Paris after placing fourth in the team event qualification at the 2023 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships. While Zakutney was recovering from his injury at the time, he was apparently the “motivation behind the team’s historic performance.”

“The team used a rallying cry, ‘Do it for Sam,’ throughout the event,” the COC said in a news release announcing the Olympic team.

Luckily, Zakutney was able to recover within about five months of rehab and after undergoing reattachment surgery.

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Getting through the injuries was a stressful experience, said Zakutney, who noted he had concerns about how they would impact his potential to go to the Games.

As a recent graduate, he said he was also “a bit hesitant” on the idea of choosing athletics over a typical career in his field, and the injuries didn’t help ease his worries.

“Right off the bat, I was a little bit hesitant about it, but I wanted to give it a shot and, then, to get injured, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, was this a mistake?’” Zakutney said. “Then, when I did my pec, that was, really, like, ‘Am I really gonna get back in time to even give myself a chance to go to the Games at all?’”

That’s “all in the past” now, though, according to Zakutney, who said he was feeling “pretty excited” about the Olympics.

“The prep has been pretty good and the body’s holding up pretty well,” Zakutney said. “I think it’s gonna be an exciting few weeks.”

The gymnast found out he would be heading to the Olympics in early June after competing at the Canadian championships in Gatineau. The selected team, however, was only officially announced by the Canadian Olympic Committee later that month.

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“It was a bit tough trying to keep that to myself and not share it with everybody,” Zakutney said.

Born in New Brunswick, Zakutney started gymnastics when he was about five years old. While he was involved in other sports at that time, Zakutney really got hooked on gymnastics.

“I just loved feeling superhuman,” he said. “As a kid, you watch cartoons and see people doing things that you don’t think are possible, and then you go to gymnastics and it’s like the closest thing to that. It made me feel really special. I just wanted to keep that feeling going.”

Now, Zakutney typically trains six days a week for three to four hours a day. Of the various events, parallel bars are his favourite.

“It’s pretty intricate. It has a mix of a lot of supporting elements as well as swinging elements,” Zakutney said.

“I do enjoy high bar (horizontal bar) as well. I would say it’s the most exciting event to watch. It’s the closest to flying, so who doesn’t love that?”

According to the COC, this will be the first Olympics since Beijing 2008 that a full Canadian men’s artistic gymnastics team will compete at the Games.

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Given the team format, Zakutney will be expected to compete in all of the artistic gymnastic events: floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar.

“During the qualification round, I will be doing all the events to see if that can get me a bid into the all-around final, but it’ll be pretty tough,” Zakutney said, adding that two of his team members, René Cournoyer and Félix Dolci, finished first and second at nationals. “If we make it to the team final, which is the ultimate goal because Canada has never done that before, I’ll probably be competing in a few events.”

In the qualification round, each country can select four athletes to compete in an event, with the top three scores counting towards the overall team score for that event. During the team final, each country can only put up three athletes, with all scores counting.

Athletes looking to qualify for the all-around final have to do each of the events. If not, they’ll only be in contention to make individual event finals or team finals.

Zakutney, who was the Canadian all-around champion in 2019 and helped the men’s team earn a bronze at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, says his aspiration for the Olympic Games is to help Canada make it to the team final.

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“I think that’ll be my focus 100 per cent,” Zakutney said. “If I do great, it’s possible I could make the all-around final, in which case that’ll be kind of like a bonus.”

Zakutney says 12 teams have qualified for the Olympics, with only eight able to make it to the team final to fight for medals. Only two athletes per country can qualify to the all-around final.

Going into the Games, Zakutney is looking forward to checking out the athletes’ village and getting his Lululemon Olympic kit.

“I’m excited for that feeling I’m gonna get when I step out onto the comp floor,” Zakutney said. “The Olympics are always what any gymnast, or athlete for that matter, aspires to go to.

“It’s gonna be really surreal.”

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