REPORT - MAG TEAM & AA Final - Subdivision 2

Missing China in the team competition, Japan and Korea were expected to go head to head battle for the championship. As the host country, the Japanese team aimed at the team title as well as its women's team.

Japan started very cleanly the competition on vault. Makoto Fukuo hit his Driggs with a small step forward. The rest of them had a good landing as well. Korea was not on their favorite event and had some weak executions on parallel bars.

In the second rotation, Japan had no mistake at all on parallel bars. All of them had a clean set with Peach. Korea had no big release element on horizontal bar but no big errors as well.

Korea went to their favorite event, floor, in the third rotation. Park Eo Jin was a superb tumbler on floor; tucked Arabian double mount; one and a half twisting back somersault to double twisting layout front; double twisting layout back; two and a half twist to punch tucked front full; triple twist dismount. Japan was very stable on horizontal bar: they had a very beautiful Yamawaki or layout Tkachev.

In the fourth rotation, Korea was weak and had weak execution on pommel horse and had a fall. Japan had very nice twisting elements such as two and half twist to punch layout barani or triple twist. Only one mistake was seen but it did not count the total. After this rotation, Japan gained a very big margin over Korea.

Japan had no fall and did their best on pommel horse in the fifth rotation. Korea had a specialist YANG Hak Seon, on rings. Considering the junior level, his strength elements were just great. He mounted with a series of kip to Maltese , Azarian and Maltese.

The last rotation was something exciting for Korean gymnasts. They were very strong on vault as well as floor. The first three gymnasts did Yurchenko with good height. The last performer, YANG Hak Seon, was superb and amazed the crowd. His first vault was YEO II and almost stuck the landing. The second vault was another exciting one, Lopez. As a result, Korea scored the best total on this event. Japan had a mistake from Nonomura (a large step forward touching the mat with a hand), but the last performer, Sho Yokoyama Honma, showed Honma cross, piked Yamawaki, Yamawaki, layout Honma. He stuck tucked double-double dismount. Even though Korea came close to Japan, the host country, Japan, won the team title for the first time since 1975. Iran, having finished their competition at the fist subdivision, placed third place over the countries in the second subdivision.

The individual all-around contention turned thrilling for Japan when Shogo NONOMURA missed his landing on rings, but he won the title with 0.25 margin over Chinese ZHOU Shixiong. Korea's Bae Ga Ram entered third.

by Toshiaki Fujii