(Reuters) – Japan’s Shinnosuke Oka displayed nerves of steel as he capitalised on early errors by the top contenders and fended off a late challenge by China’s Zhang Boheng to win the men’s all-around gold medal at the Paris Olympics yesterday.
Zhang trailed by just 0.233 of a point to take silver and his countryman Xiao Ruoteng claimed bronze.
“I had a strong desire to win, and I knew that if I could beat (Daiki) Hashimoto, I could win the title,” Oka said.
“It was really great that I was able to complete these Olympics without making any mistakes.”
The tense final came down to the last apparatus — the horizontal bar — and 20-year-old Oka maintained his poise under intense pressure to score a winning total of 86.832.
After Zhang, the last competitor on the bar, nailed his dismount following a near flawless routine, every single person at the Bercy Arena had their eyes locked on the big screen to see where the gold would end up.
Zhang appeared to think he had done enough to snatch the top prize away from his Japanese rival as he pumped his fists in celebration.
After a wait that seemed to last an eternity, it was Oka who was left celebrating wildly, with Tokyo all-around champion Hashimoto cheering loudly and drawing him into a hug. “Hashimoto kept saying to me from the very start of the competition to have confidence in myself and go out there boldly, and that gave me a lot of confidence and power,” Oka said. Zhang double and triple checked the score on the big screen, shaking his head in disbelief. “Looking back at my performance, sure there were errors… to lose is normal, but how do you pick yourself up after losing? That’s a life lesson I want to learn,” Zhang said.
First-time Olympian Oka strode into Bercy Arena in the shadow of his more celebrated teammate Hashimoto as well as Zhang, who had topped the all-around qualifying standings.
But the Chinese gymnast’s bid for gold started off with an unexpected bang during his first rotation, the floor exercise. He banged his head on the floor after his legs buckled beneath him at the end of one of his high-flying tumbling passes.
After drawing a disappointing 13.233, he knew he could not afford any more mishaps and maybe even needed others to trip up in order to climb to the top of the podium.
In the very next rotation Hashimoto drew gasps from a packed crowd when he lost his balance while doing a handstand on the pommel horse.
He slipped off the apparatus mid-routine for the second time in three days, having also fallen during the men’s team final. While on Monday, Japan rallied from that mistake to claim the team gold, there would be no reprieve for Hashimoto yesterday and a lowly score of 12.966 effectively ended his gold medal hopes.
That opened the door for Oka, who shouldered none of the expectations that the other two were saddled with.
Oka kept his wits about him as he produced spectacular routines on all six apparatus to put everyone else in his shade as he picked up his second gold in Paris.
Oka, the youngest member of the veteran Japanese team, did not make any major errors over his three days of competition as he handed Japan the men’s all-around title for a fourth successive Olympics. Kohei Uchimura had started the run by winning the title in 2012 and 2016.
Hashimoto failed in his bid to match Uchimura’s back-to-back titles and finished sixth.
The race for bronze was settled by the narrowest of margins, with Illia Kovtun missing out on securing Ukraine a second medal of the Paris Games by just 0.199 of a point.
