Chinese gymnast Zou Jingyuan, who won his third World Artistic Gymnastics Championships men's parallel bars gold medal in Liverpool, Britain, on November 6, shared with Xinhua News Agency what happened before his victorious performance.

As the second-to-last contestant, Zou saw Germany's Lukas Dauser score 15.500 points – a difficulty score of 6.600 plus an execution score of 8.900. 

"Coach asked me if I wanted to do moves with a difficulty score of 6.500 points and try to execute it as well as possible," Zou said. "But I wanted to challenge myself, so I chose the moves with a difficulty score of 6.900."

He finished his performance with an execution score of 9.266 points, putting his total score of 16.166 points well out of reach for anyone else in the match. Bronze medalist Carlos Yulo of the Philippines said he and his coach were shocked by Zou's dominance.

The last time Zou tried to perform those moves, he fell twice and failed to reach the final at the Chinese Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. 

"Back then, who would have thought that I only scored 11 points in the parallel bars event," Zou said, recalling the September event.

However, that was not the first painful loss Zou suffered while attempting to win gold. Three years ago in Stuttgart, Germany, as the two-time World Championships gold medalist, he didn't even make the final match, shocking everyone, including himself.

"I felt so great back then. I recovered well, and I was in good form. I could try a difficulty of 7.2, but I decided to lower it down to 6.6. I still failed. It was such a hard hit for me. I wanted to perform well so badly, but it backfired," Zou told Xinhua.

Like the parallel bars whose key is balance, Zou's performance relies on achieving the delicate balance between picking the most proper difficulty and executing it in the best way. He said the loss in 2019 woke him up and made him reflect on it. Two years later, Zou participated in the Tokyo Olympics and won the parallel bars gold with 16.233 points.

"I think sometimes, athletes need to restrain themselves. The held strength will enable you to go higher when you rebound," Zou said.

When asked about his goals for the future, Zou said he wants to extend his dominance in the parallel bars event and, more importantly, win a team gold for China at the Paris Olympics in 2024.