Kenzō Shirai

After high school in March 2015, he was accepted to attend/represent new home club of Nittaidai on the southern Tokyo border where other Japanese gymnasts of men and women's AG (WAG) also trained, including mentor Kōhei Uchimura.At 19 years, 11 months and 15 days old, Shirai became Japan's youngest and only teen male gymnast in history to ever win Olympic gold after Japanese men's squad took the title in the team AA (TAA) finals.In interviews, Shirai and American Sam Mikulak, top qualifier to end up 8th, expressed disappointment with audiences' sportsmanship whose boos/jeers grew loud/hostile for non-Brazilian sets as time passed.At February's Melbourne World Cup, Shirai as Team Japan's men took individual FX, VT and the horizontal bar/high bar (HB) titles, parallel bars (PB) silver, and 10th on still rings (SR); he also verified his 6th MAG eponym then—the Shirai 3 on VT, or (a) "full (1/1) on–double full off"—via governing body of all AG, International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), into Code of Points (CoP) as official owner of most MAG eponyms, behind now only to Nellie Kim of Russia's controversial 7.In spite of being the competition's favourite, he only placed sixth due to a few errors and falls on HB and pommel horse (PH) while also underperforming the infamous-difficult FX routine.At the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Japan did take bronze in the TAA finals, but senior athletes, such as Kōhei Uchimura and Yusuke Tanaka, acknowledged team got slowed by injury.Shirai was off his form, simplified various skills on each apparatus—most noticeable on FX—resulted in lower D-scores, and was unable to defend any of his 2017 medals, but despite his 2018 results on individual events, he was still able to take silver on FX and bronze on VT, and rank seventh on the AA.Like 2018, he was supposed to start his season off at the 2019 American Cup, but withdrew to treat left ankle injury,[8] which was sustained about a week before he began travelling.Shirai ultimately failed to defend his gold medal from 2018, but he did manage to capture bronze with the combined total of 82.964, despite still recovering from injury.US analyst for NBC Tim Daggett said, "(M)an, myth, legend ... capable of doing ... many things ... people thought were ... literally impossible before Shirai did them."[9] On April 26–28, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 All-Japan AA Championships, one of two closely-hosted-IAA-only meets in Chofu, Tokyo metro, Japan, and made the event finals in 22nd place, but ended up in 30th.Shirai qualified for three individual event finals, which were floor exercise, vault and the horizontal bar, ranking second, fourth and sixth respectively.Their top finisher on vault was Keitaro Okubo, posting the average combined score of 15.233, and the winner on the horizontal bar was Hirohito Kohama with number totalling 14.766.In 2019, for the first time since Shirai's debut competition in 2013, he did not make the Japanese men's national AG team, and hence, he was excluded to compete at the 2019 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on October 4–13, 2019.[14] In 2020, Shirai reluctantly began to consider retirement because of persistent injuries, but returned early 2021 to compete at the 2021 All-Japan Championships, still trying to make it to the local OG.Shirai was then also observed completing additional skills on even more WAG apparatuses, such as the execution of a partial routine on uneven bars,[17] at least to comparable levels.In December 2018, another clip was posted and compared of Shirai very skilfully reproducing compatriot Mai Murakami's entire competition floor routine to music with her hardest skills—many not assessed for scoring of MAG—such as the Gomez on floor, or quadruple turn with free leg below horizontal (originated by Spain's Elena Gómez at the 2002 World Championships in Debrecen),[18] which was another skill given FIG's top D-score of E (0.5) for all WAG dance elements in 2017–2021 quad.