Olympics Recap: Men’s Gymnastics Finals
Photos courtesy Getty ImagesIn a successful, storied career, there was one thing missing from Kohei Uchimura’s trophy case—an Olympic gold medal from the team competition. Uchimura has long been the most successful individual in men’s gymnastics, but he was never able to stand atop the podium with his team.
The Japanese last won gold in the team final during the 2004 Olympics, but that was before Uchimura was an international power. He made his first Olympics as a 19-year-old in 2008 when Japan took silver as a team. They did the same in 2012. That changed late Monday afternoon as Uchimura led his team to the top of the standings in the three-up, three-count team final and to his first Olympic gold that could be shared with his country mates competing alongside him.
Japan finished fourth in the qualifying round on Saturday, easily in the top-eight to move to the final, but disappointing for a team hoping for more. But those numbers meant nothing as qualifying turned to finals and all scores were reset to zero. When it counted the most, the Japanese, and their leader, had their best day.
Qualifying was highlighted by a rare fall from Uchimura on high bar, but with a four-up, three-count format, the fall was not devastating. When all routines counted during the team final, Uchimura again did all six events and hit all of his routines for an all-around score of 91.598. That was just about a point better than his all-around score in qualifying, but would not have been enough to top Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev, who posted the highest qualifying score at 91.964. Uchimura may need to again raise his game if he wants to repeat as Olympic all-around champion, but for a night he’ll get to relish in the fact he’s an Olympic team champion.
Uchimura is the most famous and the leader of the team, but he was not alone in helping Japan win gold. While he did six events well, he was only the highest score on two of them, and one of those was a tie with Yusuke Tanaka on high bar. Uchimura’s lone high score for Japan came on pommel horse.
Disappointment for the U.S.
There were high hopes for the U.S team heading into the team final. The team finished qualifying in second place and visions of the podium were projected everywhere. There were similar expectations in London when the team finished the qualifying process in first, but finished fifth in the final. All expectations had a different ending than the one in London, unfortunately it played out in a similar way.
Medal hopes were almost completely washed away as soon as the first event. Sam Mikulak stepped out of bounds on two of his floor passes and Alex Naddour had a fall on his final pass. Pommel horse came next and while there were no major errors, the routines weren’t the perfection needed to get out of the hole from floor.
Give credit to the team because they tried to fight back. The next three events — rings, vault and parallel bars — brought the type of routines that were needed to get back into medal contention. There was a sliver of hope heading into high bar, the final rotation, and two hit routines to start kept that feeling alive. Any chance of a comeback faded when Danell Leyva slipped off the bar coming down from a laid out tkatchev, the easiest of his three release skills in the routine.
There should not be any blame placed on individual gymnasts for the off the podium finish, especially Leyva. His fall might have been the latest and it may feel as though the comeback was stopped there, but the reality is the U.S. was already in such a hole from the start of a competition it’s highly unlikely a hit routine would have allowed the U.S. to leapfrog both Great Britain and China for a bronze medal.
Qualifying showed the U.S. has the talent to hang with the best in the world with a good day. The past two Olympic team finals, however, have not been good days.