REPORT for Men's Individual AA - DAY2

The individual all-around competition for men had the world all-around champion from the host country, Kohei Uchimura. He was also the reigning champion of Japan Cup. Hambuechen of Germany, who missed the last world championships due to an injury while warming up, was challenging Uchimura again as well as he had the previous year. Horton of USA withdrew from the competition. The contention would be among Uchimura, Hambuechen, and Uchimura's compatriot, Yamamuro.

Hambuchen started from pommel horse but he fell badly on that event. The disappointing score, 12.550, destroyed his chance to win. Uchimura and Yamamuro started the competition well on floor and pommel horse respectively.

In the second rotation, Uchimura hit his routine on pommel horse as well, and Yamamuro showed the best power of Japan on rings including back roll to Maltese mount. On vault, Korea's Kim Soo Myung and German's Nguyen did Driggs with a good landing. In the third rotation, Yamamuro performed a 7.0 vault, Lopez, but had a large step backward. Hambuechen downgraded his vault to double twisting Yurchenko but stuck his landing. Nguyen stuck his double pike dismount on parallel bars and Kim did Belle and Morisue on that event. Uchimura hit his routine and scored well but it was not enough to go ahead of Yamamuro after this rotation.

Uchimura had a hop on his landing on vault in the fourth rotation but scored more than 16.0. Yamamuro hit his parallel bar routine but had a step forward on his landing. Nguyen, on horizontal bar, did not perform Kolman but did layout Kovacs instead. Kim stuck his layout double-double dismount. Kim and Nguyen went head to head for the third prize.

In the fifith rotation, Yamamuro had impressive expression on his Yamawaki (he put his hands straight up while flying) and excited the crowd. Uchimura performed a clean routine on parallel bars and topped Yamamuro after this rotation. Nguyen hit his gorgeous routine on floor with triple twisting double back mount, and took the lead over Kim, who had a wobble on his triple twist dismount on floor.

The last rotation was impressive with exciting routines Hambuechen, Great Britain's Puris and Russia's Beleyavsky showed powerful routines on floor. Yamamuro hit his routine on floor but he had a hop on each landing after his Arabians that got some deductions. Nguyen was on his weak event, pommel horse, and showed some execution errors with bent knees. His low score gave Kim the medal: Kim, in contrast, performed on his favorite event and hit his routine. Even though he had a leg separation on Wu Gonyan, the first half of his routine was enough to give him a madal. The last performer, Uchimura, needed to perform on his favorite event, horizontal, before an excited crowd, but he hit his routine, sticking his dismount. He won the second Japan Cup in the men's all-around.

by Toshiaki Fujii

After the meet, the three top placers, Kohei Uchimura and Koji Yamamuro from Japan and Soo Min Kim from South Korea gave a press conference. At the press conference, Uchimura said it was easier for the Japanese gymnasts to get good scores in Japan.

While Uchimura was obviously correct, the scores of the gymnasts he beat in the competition were not so far off his own scores. He had only beaten his teammate by 2.35, and the third place finisher by 3.6. He only beat the man in sixteenth place by 13 points. In this kind of competition, that is a pretty close meet. Uchimura won almost every eventŠ but there were gymnasts who gave strong competition.

Here is the report with the details of the skills from the wonderful gymnasts in the compettion.

On floor exercise, Uchimura took a few hops on some of his landings, but his piked Arabian in barany out was gorgeous, his handspring Randolph was clean, and his triple twisting back sommie dismount was beautifulŠ Germany's Hambuchen did a front with double twist to a bounder front with full, as well as a double layout with double twist for a mount, and a whipback to piked Thomas roll. Yamamuro and Britain's Daniel Purvis dismounted with tucked Arabian double fronts. Easily the best Arabian double front sommie, however, was the laid out one done by Paul Ruggeri from the United States.

On pommel horse, both Russians did 360° kehres on one pommel, and Andrei Ursache from Roumania did a beautiful Mogilny. Chris Cameron from the US did a lovely Wu Guonian and a Tong Fei.

On rings, a number of gymnasts did back uprise to inverted cross and shoot to inverted cross, among them, Uchimura, Hambuchen and Ha from South Korea. (Hambuchen finished with a piked barany out.) One gymnast did a Pineda. Willig from France did a laid out Yamawaki. Yamamuro, however, was the class of the event. He began with a back roll to maltese cross, backward roll to cross, straight armed, straight body press to inverted cross, reverse giant to inverted cross, reverse giant to maltese crossŠ he later had both uprise and shoot to handstand and this is the one place where another gymnast beat Uchimura!

On vault, a lot of gymnasts did Driggs, but Hambuechen did a Yurchenko with double twist, and Yamamuro did a pretty good Lopez. There were no triple somersaults in the individual finals.

On parallel bars, while Uchimura did a peachbasket with full twist on parallel bars and Yamamuro seemed to be able to swing from a straddle "L" to a handstand, the originality was David Belyavskiy from Russia who seemed to do a Tippelt to hang and giant swing. This reporter would have to see this several more times to figure out what it was! The same gymnast concluded with a tucked double front sommie.

On horizontal bar, Pakhomenko from Russia did a piked JaegerŠ pretty rare from male performers. Yamamuro admitted in the press conference that horizontal bar was his weakest event, so when he did a shoot with full twist to Yamawaki so to sell it, he put his hands up as he sailed over the bar. That got a big ovation, and hopefully some sort of bonus. Paul Ruggeri from the US did a shoot with half to straight body Tkatchev, and later a straight body Tkatchev that he caught in a mixed grip. Hambuechen had at least four releasesŠ but he was neither as clean nor as spectacular as Uchimura, who had only one flawŠ. He caught his Yamawaki too close to the bar, and so had to struggle to get his next giant over the bar. However, he made up for that by sticking the landing so perfectly that the crowd was brought to its feet.

by Mickey Chaplan