A day after the American women romped to the team title by more than eight points, Uchimura, Oleg Verniaiev and Britain’s Max Whitlock provided the kind of edge-of-the-seat drama that tore everyone’s nerves to shreds.
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Whitlock, bounced back after missing out on a medal on Monday, said the event was his greatest challenge because he had to “get all six apparatus right”.
Arriving here as a world silver medallist in the all-around, and despite his reputation as an unflappable competitor, his scores have failed to live up to his usual exacting standards. He nervously laughed and said: “I can’t say that myself!” “It just made it so much more tense at the end – it was really tough to be honest”.
The medal-winners swapped positions throughout the event before Uchimura and Verniaiev pulled out in front, leaving Whitlock to watch as China’s Chaopin Lin and Nikolai Kuksenkov of Russian Federation narrowly failed to snatch third place.
“I felt it was too risky to try one”, said Verniaiev.
‘He produced an incredible high bar routine on that last piece and that is one reason he’s my idol, with the amount of pressure he was under’. But the focus paid off – when the world pommel champion began on his favourite apparatus, a classy double pirouette dismount helped him into a temporary first place. Uchimura went first, scoring a 15.8.
And more gold could come when he competes in the floor final next week. “I think I am the happiest person in the world”, the gymnast said, his face expressing relief now that he is free of the pressure to win.
“I got as close as possible to his score as nobody has done before”.
“Going onto the horizontal bar I knew what I had to do”. He was the only man to earn a score over 16 points, a 16.100 on parallel bars, and the lone gymnast with only one score under 15. “And I think that there’s a lot of athletes out there that are actually showing that that’s not true”.
“The 2020 Olympics will be in the country I was born in so of course I want to aim to compete”, Uchimura told Reuters. “I did my best and leave it to the judges”, said Vernyayev, who finished 11th in the all-around event at the 2012 London Games.
The result was another blowout victory, but the Americans couldn’t put it on cruise control like they had in their first two wins.
Uchimura’s latest victory came two days after leading Japan to the gold medal in the men’s team final.
Max Whitlock scored 90.641 points to claim the bronze medal and ensure Britain’s first podium finish in an Olympic all-around event for 108 years.
Uchimura, the son of two gymnasts and who took up the sport at the age of three, sounded tired from all the preparation put into reaching the Olympics every four years ― not to mention the wear and tear on his body.
At the outset, he surrendered 0.600 points to Uchimura because his routine wasn’t as hard (6.5, compared to 7.1).
“Since 2009 this title has been mine, but this time was the trickiest for me”, admitted the six-time world all-around champion. When Uchimura drilled a 15.566 on vault, Verniaiev responded with a 15.5. Like how Verniaiev had the difficulty advantage on parallel bars, Uchimura had and even bigger one on higher bar, a start value difference of 0.6.
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Despite a controversial moment at the 2012 London Olympics-Ukraine originally placed third in the team final, but was bumped down to fourth after the Japanese team successfully appealed Uchimura’s score on the pommel horse-there’s no animosity between the two. Verniaiev’s strongest apparatus gave him a almost a full point lead going into the high bar.
