WISKUS Shane

General
MOVE TO COLORADO
In November 2020, during his senior year competing for the University of Minnesota, he relocated to the US Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado. He made the move in order to assure consistent training for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, following the university's announcement that their men's gymnastics programme would be discontinued after the 2020/21 collegiate season. "[The university] have been given just days to move out of the gym after the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] championships [in April] 2021. Even if they let me train there, I would have been all by myself. So I had to look for an alternative." Quarantine rules mandated by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee restricted him from travelling between Colorado and Minnesota, but he continued his studies via distance learning and was able to compete later in the season. (startribune.com, 22 Nov 2020; gophersports.com, 25 Jan 2021; gophersports.com, 18 Apr 2021)

COVID-19 UPSIDE
He says the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo until 2021 should benefit him on pommel horse, the apparatus on which he says he has always struggled to add difficulty. "In the last few years, I figured out how to perform a clean routine that can score well. Now that the Olympics have been postponed, I have extra time to push my difficulty to the next level and focus on the little details to create the perfect routine." (Instagram profile, 03 Aug 2020)