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Result The Major Competitions in 2004
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Japanese National Championships
Men's Team Final Coverage
Report Masamune Yuasa
(web published onNovember 28, 2004)
DATE: Novmenber 12, 2004
PLACE:Yoyogi Gymnasium #1

Tokushukai's captain, Isao Yoneda, received the cup.

With many enthusiastic fans in the crowd, even on a weekday, the Japanese National Championships were held in Yoyogi Gymnasium #1, the venue of Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The team finals for both men and women were on the first day, and the team finals were the qualification for the all-round finals and the apparatus finals.

Since the Japanese Olympic team had won the gold medal at Athens Olympic games, each member of the Olympic Team was expected to lead the competition, but Takehiro Kashima withdrew from competition due to a broken rib, which he had injured on a pommel. However, the rest of the Olympians competed well against many hopefuls for the next Olympics in Beijing, China, in 2008.

Among the six teams in this National Championshi0ps, the most was expected from Tokushukai Gymnastics Club; this club has two Olympians, Isao Yoneda and Hisashi Mizutori, and the alternate, Tomoharu Sano. The three gymnasts did not perform their routines as expected, and Mizutori and Sano fell on their best event, pommel horse. However, they regained on rings. Mizutori has improved a lot on this event since Athens, and Sano was one of the most powerful performers on this event. They did well on vault, too. Three Driggs were performed, and they earned more than 9.50 each. After that rotation, nothing could stop them; they did not miss on parallel bars, and made the highest team score on horizontal bar, led by Yoneda’s 9.750. Eventually, they won by 3.500 over the second place team, Nippon Sports Science University.

Nippon Sports Science University, in contrast, started well on vault. The landings were not perfect but were good enough to lead over Tokushukai. They missed on parallel bars, but had very exciting performances on horizontal bar; Takuya Nakase and Ryuta Nakazato did Kolman and other superb releases and made clean landings of double twisting double layout dismounts. On floor, Nakase was very strong with two strong acrobatic series and tucked double-double dismount to score 9.600; but the others did not perform well, missing the three consecutive somersault combination, and lost a lot of SV, which allowed Tokushukai to pass them on that rotation. On this event, Yuto Hayami unveiled a triple twisting tucked double somersault, a brand new SE element, which North Korean Ri Jonsun had shown at Athens. After that event, Kazusa Fujita performed very clean circles on pommel horse to score 9.550 and three strong performers on rings scored more than 9.400 each, but they finally could not catch up with Tokushukai.

With a lot of veterans, Konami Sports aimed at victory, but they missed on pommel horse and parallel bars, and finished third. Juntendo University, Nittai Swallows, Tsukuba University, and Nippon University were fourth to seventh, respectively.

As for the all-round qualification, Isao Yoneda topped the other Olympians. His highlight was horizontal bar, but he was not in his best shape on the whole. Naoya Tsukahara was second with a strong performance on rings to score 9.600, and Hiroyuki Tomita was third. Tomita, the best all-around competitor for Japan at the Athens Olympics, missed on floor; he landed on his back on his first pass, and put his hands down on his tucked double-double on his second pass. He did a flawless series of Wu Gonian, Fedrchenko, Sivado Travel, E-Flop on pommel horse. The youngest Olympian, Daisuke Nakano, performed in the first session, and missed on vault (overrotated double twisting Yurchenko), and that cost him a spot in the top 6.


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