In the summer of 2016, Andreas Toba wrote German Olympic history. Eight years later he is still doing gymnastics – and is celebrating a special comeback.
After a long injury break, Andreas Toba, who became known as the “Hero de Janeiro”, will compete on four apparatus in his comeback. At the World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, the 33-year-old Hanoverian will be competing on the pommel horse, rings, parallel bars and horizontal bars starting this Thursday.
“I’m currently trying to fine-tune my exercises and make some changes. That’s why my goal is to do the exercises as well as possible and to gain a certain stability so that I can improve from competition to competition,” said Toba the dpa.
The 2021 European Championship runner-up on the horizontal bar suffered a partial tear of the cruciate ligament in his right knee last September, immediately before the team all-around competition at the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, and had to forego competing.
The “Hero de Janeiro”
The injury was reminiscent of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. There he tore his cruciate ligament in the same knee and also during a floor exercise. Afterwards, he still did gymnastics on the pommel horse in the team competition to secure the team result. For this he was celebrated as the “Hero de Janeiro”.
Despite Toba’s failure, the German team qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer. His goal now is to secure a place in the ranks of the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) for the highlight of the season and thus his fourth participation in the Olympics.
“The Olympic Games are the greatest thing you can achieve as a gymnast, and the fourth one would be a dream for me that would finally come true. That means so much to an athlete because you do everything for this moment,” said Toba .