Danila Leykin arrives in Phoenix chasing a Worlds team spot; Worlds team spot on the line this week

2026 U.S. Gymnastics Championships: Danila Leykin arrives in Phoenix chasing a Worlds team spot – and having fun doing it

The 19-year-old first-year senior, the 2026 Winter Cup high bar champion, brings a stack of upgrades to the U.S. Gymnastics Championships as senior men’s competition opens on Thursday (6 August).

Ask U.S. gymnast Danila Leykin what he has been working on, and settle in.

There are floor upgrades, a double-double layout he might swap in depending on where the event lands in his rotation. There is pommel horse, on which he has been “grinding”. There is a Yurchenko two-and-a-half twisting vault he’s bringing back, and there are new elements on parallel bars. There is high bar, where he is already able to challenge anyone in the field, that brings a rearranged routine.

And there is the return to all six events, and with it, all-around competition.

“There’s a lot going on in training, a lot of upgrades,” Leykin said ahead of the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, where the senior men’s gymnastics competition opens Thursday (6 August) in Phoenix. “So I’m back to all six events, so I’m back to doing all around.”

It is a lot for a 19-year-old in his first season as a senior. It is more still with a place on the team for the World Championships on the line this week.

Leykin is trying not to carry the weight of it into the arena.

“I’d be a fool to say that there isn’t pressure, because there obviously is pressure,” he said. " I know that I am capable of making it to the World Championships, but I’m doing my best to not allow the fact that I want to do it, to not let me do it ."

He has earned the right to think that way.

Leykin won the high bar title at the Winter Cup earlier this year, then competed high bar and parallel bars as the United States took silver behind the People’s Republic of China at the American Cup in Las Vegas.

Last year, still a junior, he placed fourth in the all-around at the Junior World Championships in Manila – the best finish an American man has managed at that event – and added a silver on high bar and a bronze on the parallel bars as the U.S. won its first team medal in the competition’s history.

“I’m going from beginning to the end”

Leykin was born in the United States, but his gymnastics started in Russia, where his mother, Evgenia, a gymnast herself, had taken the family for a couple of years.

The verdict from the coaches there was blunt.

“They said that, ‘Yeah, you’re probably not going to be a good fit for the sport’,” Leykin said. His mother’s answer: “Well, we’re going to try.”

The family returned to the U.S., and a coach in Las Vegas took him on.

Two years later, at age nine, Leykin moved to Texas to train with Sergei Pakanich, at the time coaching Paris 2024 team bronze medallist Asher Hong . He lived with a teammate’s family for a month before his mother could join.

“Since I was nine years old, I’ve been with Sergei the entire time,” he said. “He’s taught me every single skill I know from start to finish, like everything.”

Now in his fourth year at EVO Gymnastics in Sarasota, Florida, Leykin is sticking with Pakanich for the long haul.

He passed on the collegiate route that produced most of the last U.S. Olympic team, choosing to stay at EVO and pursue the Olympics alongside his longtime coach and the program being built by three-time Olympian Sam Mikulak and Syque Caesar, a London 2012 Olympian.

“I told myself I’m going from beginning to the end with Sergei,” he said.

At EVO, there are plenty of others to push Leykin.

Brody Malone , a two-time Olympian, trains there, along with Tokyo 2020 Olympian Shane Wiskus , Donnell Whittenburg , Kameron Nelson and others. On the day Leykin spoke with reporters, he and Malone had gone for ramen after an intrasquad.

“He is an older brother to me. I have so much respect for him,” Leykin said.

He had asked Malone how to handle a season in which he knows the opportunity is there.

“You have to recognize that there’s an opportunity… but you also have to have your values in the right place and be OK whatever it’s going to be,” Leykin said, relaying the advice.

What the older group has taught him most is calmness. Growing up, the mistakes used to undo him.

" It’s super important to be able to stay composed and make a mistake and you need to bounce back immediately ," he said. “And that’s what I was struggling with growing up, just because I care so deeply about the sport.”

His younger brother, Luca, trains at EVO too, and on the days when Leykin’s body aches and an easier session tempts him, he thinks of his little brother watching.

“I’ve got to show him that I am working really hard,” he said.

That hard work, he hopes, will manifest Thursday and Saturday (8 August) in Phoenix.

But for all the upgrades and the math of world team selection, the goal Leykin keeps coming back to has nothing to do with a score.

“Go out there and have a good time and let people see that I’m having a great time out there, because I am,” he said, “and hopefully show some kiddos or the younger generation that… it’s not scary, it is a good time .”