Japan’s Kohei Uchimura defended his Olympic title in men’s all-around gymnastics, coming from behind to defeat Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev in the last rotation of the final at the Rio Games on Wednesday.
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The 23-year-old took bronze behind Japanese superstar Kohei Uchimura, who retained his title from London 2012 after edging past Ukraine’s Oleg Verniaiev.
Whitlock said: “The all-around is obviously the toughest event because you’ve got to get all six apparatus right, and it is something my coach and I have been working very hard on since London 2012”.
The scores of the qualification round do not carry over to the all-around final, so all gymnasts’ scores will start from zero.
“This time was really the trickiest for me”, Uchimura said.
Verniaiev lead the way on the rings and parallel bars, finishing second on the pommel horse behind Whitlock, the reigning world champion on the apparatus.
Despite a mistake in the opening pommel horse event, the team began logging high scores in the third event, the vault, to mount a comeback and finish well ahead of second-place Russian Federation. When I return to the high bar, I didn’t check it either.
He stuck a flawless landing to score 15.8 with Verniaiev delivering a less spectacular show on the apparatus losing out with 14.800. Mikulak wound up with an 89.631 score for seventh place, with Brooks’ 87.632 giving him 14th place.
“The 2020 Olympics will be in the country I was born in so of course I want to aim to compete”, Uchimura told Reuters. “All the questions are completely superfluous here…” I knew that although high bar is one of my favorite, I have to achieve a certain score.
“I don’t think I am well-known in the world”.
The Chinese team of Lin Chaopan, Deng Shudi, Zhang Chenglong, Liu Yang and You Hao sat back dejectedly in their chairs after Russian Federation pipped them by 0.331 point to the silver, with Zhang breaking down in tears afterwards.
Verniaiev said they had learned only minutes before the competition that Semiankiv was unable to perform and the team couldn’t move fast enough for another member to complete his routines.
“We never blew a single contest”, he said, calling it a “silly and unpredictable situation”.
“Since 2009 this event’s title has been remaining with me”.
Whitlock’s bronze was Team GB’s sixth medal of a remarkable Wednesday at Rio 2016 and the gymnast from Hertfordshire predicted a great atmosphere in the athletes’ village.
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He believed he had sealed it with his solid high bar routine but 19-time World Championships medallist Uchimura was smiled on by the judges and overtook him at the death. Neither suffered a true fall, but Mikulak’s knees brushed the mat on the landing of his vault and he had to stagger forward to stay upright.
