Oshima (left) and Ishizaka (right) lead with confidence

Women's Competition
Due to their disastrous fourteenth place finish in the Anaheim World Championships last year, only two spots will be given to Japanese girls for the Athens Olympics. Twenty two gymnasts were selected for this secondary trials according to the results of the 2003 National Championships, and two other gymnasts petitioned to compete in this competition. Twenty four gymnasts in total  competed for two days to go to the Olympic Trials, which will be held in May.

Manami Ishizaka, the reigning and two-time national champion, won the all around championship both days with very consistent performances. Without any big mistakes or wobbles, she seemed to be preparing for Olympic competition. She upgraded her uneven bars and floor routine, and got 9.0 or more in each event except beam.

On vault, there was a variety of Yuruchenko entry vaults. The best one was Ishizaka's one and a half twisting Yurchanko. With good push, height and twist, she landed very cleanly. Kyoko Oshima performed the same vault on the first day but took several steps backward; on the second day she used a full twisting Yurchenko. Erika Mizoguchi also performed a full twisting Yurchenko; she was more powerful and had beautiful body line, so her performance was better than that of Oshima. Miki Uemura showed a round off - half-on to front handspring piked somersault. Ayaka Sahara and Satomi Yamamoto challenged them with front handspring piked barani. Sahara opened her body well enough to land in layout position. She stuck the landing and scored more than 9.0.

Uneven bars was the weakest event for the Japanese team according to the current code, but some of the gymnasts have changed their routines. Ishizaka improved her execution of el-grip giant with full twist and el-grip giant with a half twist to Tkachev. She also performed a Gienger before her overshoot to handstand on low bar, and she finished with full twisting giant to full-in dismount. Mizoguchi did a gorgeous Gienger and hit every handstand in the series of one and a half twisting giant to full twisting el-grip giant. She stuck the landing on the second day and scored 9.100, with SV 9.50. Uemura did a beautiful full twisting Stalder and Sahara used the new combination of one and a half twisting giant to Jaeger but she made a mistake in her strong triple twisting dismount on both days (she took big steps on the first day and she sat down on the second day). The reining national and Asian champion on this event, Mayu Kuroda, was completely out of shape and made uncharacteristic mistakes.

The gymnasts composed routines with higher SV on beam but they had to connect the elements of the combinations without any pause. Even though they had good combinations in their routines, they did not get as much SV as they expected because of those pauses. Or, they had falls on the combinations. Many gymnasts used front sommie to ff to layout stepout, but they were rarely stable on their front sommies, and had to stop to connect to the next elements. Kyoko Oshima was the most confident gymnast and hit her routine on both days. She nicely did front sommie to ff to layout stepout and full twisting tucked jump to full twisting layout jump. She stuck her two and a half twist dismount on both days to win the event. Ayaka Sahara had a different routine from the others: she had a good combination of two backward acrobatic elements; round off to layout back sommie mount, one-arm ff to consecutive layout stepout and round off to layout sommie. Her triple twist dismount was not as good as usual, but the routine seemed to have much originality

On floor, Kyoko Oshima had a strong acrobatic series: She performed (1) a double twisting layout front to full twisting layout front (which became a tucked full twisting front on the second day) and (2) a two and a half twisting layout back sommie to layout front sommie., but Ishizaka had better execution than Oshima with a tucked full-in mount, two and a half twisting back somersault, double pike, and triple twist dismount. Her triple twisting dismount made the routine more exciting. Ayaka Sahara did only a piked full-in and whip to triple twist. She did a very crisp triple turn in the beginning of her routine. Some gymnasts suffered from injuries and needed to lower the difficulty of their acrobat elements. A lot of gymnasts tried triple turn, double twisting cat leap, etc., but they rarely completed their twists. Since they tried to get higher SV, they composed those skills in
dance combinations, but they seemed to get deductions on them.

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