The Team England gymnast who suffered a horror fall in the Commonwealth Games says he is thankful to have avoided life-changing injuries – but his initial reaction was to feel he’d let his country down.
Gabriel Langton was taken away on a stretcher after landing on his neck following his fall from the high bars in the men’s team competition on Friday. However he was released after 24 hours in hospital when scans showed that he had escaped with just heavy bruising to his neck.
“I remember pretty much all of it,” he said. “Because we were slightly behind in the competition, I remember trying to go for as close to perfection as I could. Obviously it went slightly wrong. And then I was in quite a lot of pain when I fell down.
“I heard a lot of people in the arena, as they went ‘ooh’. I got told to stay as still as I could on the mat. Then I was in a brace as well so I couldn’t look around and see people’s reactions to it.”
However, after the accident Langton wanted to get up because he felt the fall might have cost England a medal. “Initially I thought I needed to get back on the bar to finish my routine,” he said. “The team were behind. It felt like I could have contributed to the team score. So I was disappointed in myself.
“Then obviously more medical staff came up and I was like, ‘I’m probably not going to get back on the bar now’. So I was really just frustrated that that had happened at that moment. Then obviously when adrenaline kind of wore out a bit, I was in some pain.”
But while lying in the medical room in a neck brace, England’s national coach came up to him and told him that the team had won silver. “It was literally about 10 or 15 minutes later,” he said. “Obviously he was slightly worried but to make it a bit more positive he told me straight away: ‘You have either just won a gold or silver medal with your team, so congratulations’. It was a positive.”
However Langton admitted he initially did fear a serious injury. “On the evening of when it happened, and then the early morning after, I was kind of struggling to ignore that side of it because I didn’t know. I knew that I could talk still, I could move a lot of things. Then when I got the scans back, it was a big relief.”
Asked if he felt lucky, Langton added: “After it happened, I didn’t feel lucky at all. I was just so annoyed about what had happened. But looking back at it now and kind of having seen the video and stuff, I suppose it could have very easily gone a different way.”
Langton is not expecting to compete at the European Championships next month, but he is hoping to get back to training soon after being cleared of suffering a concussion.
“The second scan I had really just said that there’s kind of some swelling in my neck, which I think is to be expected,” he said. “My back has tightened up a little bit as well. But I don’t think that’s too surprising. It’s nothing too serious. Team England doctors and physios and it hopefully won’t be too long.
“I’ve done that skill so many times – probably about 10 thousand times and this has happened once,” he added. “And I have performed it safely 10 thousand times. If you look at those stats then you can see that this was just kind of a freak accident. I think I’ll be pretty confident that I can put that to one side.”
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