He always had everything under control. The gymnastics technique, the correct dosage of strength training and all six devices. For ten years, the Japanese Kohei Uchimura looked good to excellent at the crucial moment because he had mastered the planning and actually always the right division of time. Until 16 months ago, she ran away from him.
Uchimura, the 32-year-old and outstanding gymnast of his time, like every top athlete, wants an appropriate end to his dazzling career and wanted to celebrate it by Sunday evening at the latest. Then he had another appearance in the bar finals of a world championship – and that in front of finally some audience in Kitakyushu, his hometown. Five competitors were better at the top, and on the same evening Uchimura told the AFP news agency after what was actually his last competition: “I don’t want to talk about my withdrawal.” Instead, he wanted to think about it again. “I don’t feel like I don’t want to do gymnastics anymore.” On the contrary, the competition fueled him again. Because despite the missing points, this performance “reminded him of how much I still like gymnastics”.
Athletes of this caliber do not want to resign as injured or unlucky enough to qualify
If he sticks to it, then he would have to make a fourth attempt for a suitable end to his career, and that could only be the next World Cup in exactly one year in Liverpool. Uchimura, the graceful and tolerant exceptional gymnast, to whom fans gave the somewhat massive nickname King Kohei, was still fighting for a well-rounded career on Sunday. About an appearance, similar to Fabian Hambüchen, who made his last somersault flight as a gymnast from the horizontal bar in Rio 2016 and won Olympic gold. Athletes of this caliber do not want to disappear as injured or resign as unlucky enough to qualify. A big end to your career is like a good book closure, only it has to be written.
And Uchimura has been on it for 15 months. At the end of July 2020, the Olympic Games would have been scheduled, for known reasons Uchimura also had to train for a year longer, it was about the Olympics in the capital of his home country. The year came to an end, the games began, Uchimura, who meanwhile reduced the program to his special horizontal bar, entered the qualification and slipped off the rack if there was an undershoot. Like everything on the horizontal bar, this element required the highest level of skill, and yet it looked inconveniently casual for the big favorite fall.
The years had left their mark on Uchimura. Because he was talented on all devices. He got his biggest collection of victories as an all-rounder along with eight World Cup and Olympic titles. He achieved a total of 20 individual medals on all devices at the two major world events. The all-round appearances, not just the golden ones, because these missions are preceded by a long summer training session, were particularly stressful for a wiry and muscular body. The first consequences of the hardships came to light at the 2017 World Cup. Uchimura injured his ankle in qualifying and gradually lost his superiority. After all, in 2018 he again secured silver bar and team bronze at the World Cup in Qatar.
Champions are now others, such as Daiki Hashimoto, his team-mate ten years his junior
When he slipped in qualifying for the Olympic Games, which had been postponed due to the pandemic, there were no spectators in the hall due to Corona, and yet at that moment it was a little quieter than quiet. Had the long time without competition bothered him, was the full mental presence on the device missing? Or was there a lack of the routine that he had been used to over the years without the many exercises beforehand? Uchimura didn’t know herself. “I have always been able to show my training results in competition,” he said in Tokyo after the fall, “not this time.”
The time of his career ticked on, but Uchimura made up ground again in the race with her. He concentrated on the horizontal bar, despite the pain in his strained shoulder, because the work in his home in Kitakyushu in the north of the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu was worth it. What followed was a demonstration by the youth and sixth place for him – no success for Uchimura. Gymnastics champions are now the Chinese Zhang Boheng and Hu Xuwei, or Daiki Hashimoto, Uchimura’s ten years younger teammate, the all-around Olympic champion who was crowned three months ago.
He especially congratulated the young Hashimoto and realized: “I don’t always have to be the winner anymore.” After all, the whole team is still young, they are looking into a great future. In general: “A new generation is emerging in all countries,” he says. It sounds like the wrestling Kohei Uchimura can say goodbye to high-performance gymnastics and his unparalleled career after this long journey and a few more nights in which he can think a lot.