GABRIEL LANGTON admitted he feared for his gymnastics future after his horror fall from the high bar on the opening day of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Friday.

The 19-year-old sustained head and neck injuries after after slipping off the apparatus midway through the men’s team event, and spent a night in hospital after being carried from the arena floor on a stretcher.

“I knew that I could talk still, I could move a lot of things but I was just hoping that I could do gym again really,” said Langton, after scans revealed nothing worse than soreness and swelling.

“With other injuries like a leg injury, it’s not nice but you know most of the time that those things will heal. I suppose neck injuries are to be taken seriously, so I was just hoping that it wasn’t anything too bad.

“When I got the scans back, it was a big relief. My thought process switched quite quickly to being ‘I should be back in the gym quite soon’.”

Langton returned to the team hotel on Saturday, where he was reunited with his England team-mates and belatedly awarded his silver medal. A late replacement for the injured Max Whitlock, Langton revealed he was told that he earned a place on the podium whilst still lying stricken backstage.

“I still remember pretty much all of it,” added Langton. “Because we were slightly behind in the competition, I remember trying to go for as close to perfection as I could.

“I really went aggressively on the first go and obviously it went slightly wrong. And then I was obviously in quite a lot of pain when I fell down. Initially I felt like I needed to get back on the bar to finish my routine. Then the medical staff came up and I was like, ‘I’m probably not going to get back on the bar now.’”

Langton, who was not concussed and never lost consciousness during the incident, has already turned his focus to recovery and a return to the apparatus, and does not expect his experience to unduly affect his performance in the future.

“I’ve done that skill so many times – probably about 10,000 times – and this has happened once,” he added. “I think you can see that this was just a freak accident and it was just a shame that it happened under these circumstances.

“I’m pretty confident that I can put it to one side and trust in my gymnastics again.”