US gymnast Simone eyes record five golds, while Japanese star Kohei Uchimura seeks home glory
US gymnast Simone Biles. Pics/AFP, Getty Images
American gymnastic goddess Simone Biles and Japan’s national sporting deity Kohei Uchimura begin their quests for Olympic immortality in Tokyo this weekend.
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Both have already achieved enough to be considered the greatest gymnasts of all time, but they approach the delayed 2020 Games as hungry as ever to enhance reputations that already stand as tall as nearby Mount Fuji.
Sunday’s women’s qualification sees Biles set out on the road she hopes will be paved with five gold medals. She went close to pulling off the unparalleled feat at the last Olympics in Rio. Her four golds in 2016 matched the record for a woman gymnast, a bronze in the beam the one that got away.
Hot favourite
The Ohio-born superstar will be hot favourite with Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum to win the US a third consecutive team title next Tuesday. Two days later Biles will seek to become the first back-to-back winner of the all-around title in over half a century.
Japan’s Kohei Uchimura
The vault is next, and if the Ariake Gymnastics Centre, empty due to Tokyo’s Coronavirus restrictions, was full with fans they would all have their hearts in their mouths as she started her run-up. That’s because the millions watching on their televisions and tablets around the world could be treated to a Yurchenko double pike—a move so devilishly complex and gravity-defying it had never been attempted by a woman in competition until Biles pulled it off this year.
Then she will again be out to rule the floor and conclude unfinished business on the beam. Asked after an impressive team training run-out on Wednesday when she’d be heading home she replied: “After we finish the job.”
Retirement is very much on the post Tokyo-horizon for Uchimura, the all-around champion in 2012 and 2016 who only scraped into his fourth Games in qualifying.
At 32 and beset by shoulder problems, the man known by his massive fan base as ‘King’ Kohei is foregoing a tilt at a third all-around crown to focus on the horizontal bar.
‘Thrilled to compete at home’
After scraping through qualifying to earn his place in the Japan team he was thrilled to be competing on home soil. “I love it, especially because it’s in Japan,” he said. “This is my fourth Olympics, and this is probably the best one yet.”
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