All-Around, Individual, Men

With Japan’s outstanding gymnast Kohei Uchimura not defending his all-round title in Tokyo, it was a great opportunity for the 2019 all-round world champion Nikita Nagorny of the ROC to push for gold. He finished second to Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto in the all-round qualifying, with the Chinese pair of former all-round world champion Xiao Ruoteng, and Sun Wei occupying third and fourth place. They were followed by Britain’s Joe Fraser, the parallel bars gold medallist at the 2019 World Championships. Another serious contender in Tokyo was 25-year-old Russian Artur Dalaloyan (representing ROC), who was the winner of nine World Championship gold medals in 2018 and 2019. He qualified for the all-round final after finishing sixth in qualifying.

Hashimoto gave an outstanding performance throughout the final as the 19-year-old became the new superstar of men’s gymnastics. Despite some very polished performances, he was still pushed hard by the Chinese pair of Xiao and Wei and the pre-tournament favourite, Nagorny. Hashimoto was the top scorer on the pommel horse and high bar, while Nagorny headed the scoring on the rings and parallel bars, with his 15.400 points on the bars being the highest scoring routine of the competition.

The local Japanese hero led after the opening round on the floor with a 14,833 and he extended his lead after scoring 15.166 on the pommel horse. He lost some ground after the rings when he only scored 13.533 and this allowed Xiao to take the lead. Xiao retained the lead after the vault, and while Hashimoto was back in fourth place, only .401 points separated the four gold medal contenders. Xiao’s team-mate Sun Wei put himself into the silver medal position with Nagorny in the bronze medal place.

Going into the final high bar routine, Xiao led from Nagorny with Hashimoto in third. The Japanese gymnast knew what he had to do with the very last routine on the bar. Xiao was in the lead with 88.065 points, which meant Hashimoto needed 14.534 or more for victory. He kept his cool and scored 14.933 points which gave him the gold medal by .400 points as he became the third successive Japanese winner of the title after Uchimura’s victories in 2012 and 2016.