DATE: Novmenber 12, 2004
PLACE:Yoyogi Gymnasium #1
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| 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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