“We try and perform like world champions but this is the Olympic Games and it stresses us out”.
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But it sure didn’t look that way on Day 1 of the Games, as he lost his grip on the high bar while performing one of his signature daring moves.
Normally, of course, such a disaster would hit a competitor’s score pretty hard – but luckily for Uchimura, he was only competing in the preliminary qualifiers for the all-around event, and was so far ahead that his progression to the all-around competition proper is not in doubt.
The Japanese team got off to a steady start, with Ryohei Kato pulling off a clean routine on the pommel horse in the first rotation, but second-up Yusuke Tanaka fell during his performance – the first of a series of lackluster showings that would follow.
Gymnasts from two-time Olympic team champions China and Great Britain, bronze medallists from London 2012, are set to compete later in the Rio Olympic Arena.
“It gives me a lot to think about”. “I was too concerned with the slipperiness of the horizontal bar, and that’s made me fall”.
“I didn’t fall on any apparatus and went through everything perfectly”, said the 22-year-old former world champion on parallel bars.
China, the United States, Russia, Japan, Great Britain, Brazil, Ukraine and Germany qualified for the team final that will be held Monday, after surprise mistakes from the Japanese and strong performances from China, the US and Brazil upset some of the regular pecking order.
While Japan lived to fight another day, Uchimura lost his chance to be in the running for the horizontal bar gold as his score of 14.300 left him well outside the top eight scores needed to reach the apparatus final.
The field also includes Germany’s Marcel Nguyen and American Danell Leyva, all-around silver and bronze medallists from the London 2012. He is competing in his first Olympic Games.
The Chinese scored 270.461 with the United States just behind on 270.405 and Russian Federation (269.612), Japan (269.294), Britain, Brazil, Ukraine and Germany completing the line-up for Monday’s eight-team final. “We’re ready to improve on what we did today”.
Larduet competes for Cuba.
The Olympic gymnastics gets underway with men’s qualifying with the top 24 advancing to Wednesday’s all-around final.
The four countries who failed to make the final were Switzerland, South Korea, the Netherlands and France.
But he only performed on the vault and floor.
France’s Samir Ait Said, who sustained a horrifying leg injury on the vault, was said by his team leader to have broken his left tibia.
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Germany’s Andreas Toba picked up a knee ligament injury on the floor but continued on the pommel horse, allowing his team to scrape into the final.
