Max Whitlock might be one of the best in his field but he still went back to the drawing board ahead of this week's World Championships.
Missing out on gold at the Commonwealth Games to Irish hotshot Rhys McClenaghan, Whitlock found himself in the unusual position of settling for second best on his favoured piece of apparatus.
And more disappointment followed for the two-time Olympic champion with his 19-year-old rival topping the podium at last summer's European Championships while Whitlock could only finish seventh.
But the Hemel-Hempstead gymnast believes that recent failures have only made him more determined than ever ahead of the World Championships in Doha after going back to basics.
“It gave me loads of fire in my belly to just get going again because what it did was teach me a lot of lessons,” he said.
“I’ve always said a perfect competition is brilliant and I’d have that any day over a competition with mistakes, but you don’t learn anything.
“The competitions that I’ve done, and I’ve fell off and I’ve made mistakes, I’ve learned so much on how to move forward and how to improve with a clearer pathway. That’s what it’s done for me.
“It’s about using that experience, moving forward and hopefully this one can go well.”
An Olympic pommel horse champion in Rio two years ago, Whitlock built on the bronze medal that shot him into the British public’s eye at his home Olympics in 2012.
With lofty ambitions of adding to his phenomenal Olympic medal haul at Tokyo 2020, the 25-year-old’s first task is to defend his pommel horse crown at a third successive World Championships.
“I’ve always wanted to put myself in a position where I have that potential and over the last two years I have made the upgrades and put the risk in and tried to get that experience on some new skills,” he said.
“I’ve got to a level that I want it to be at now and I’ve always wanted to go into a competition on pommel with the highest start value.
“I am really pushing that this time as well, so for me I just need to focus on doing my job, focus on doing a clean routine, the same as any other competition.
“I try not to think about any medals, any medals or anything like that. If I can do my job like I’ve been doing in training, then I’d be happy.
“It’s tough and it doesn’t get any easier, it gets harder as you go on. But it’s a challenge and I love challenges."
Sportsbeat 2018