To be Free

He did it! Nailed almost all but a landing on this floor ex. Still, Uchimura finished 1.6 points ahead of Nyugen… great performance from Uchimura, so much much better then what we saw on qualifications and team finals.

Tanaka did great too, but sadly couldn’t keep things together on pommel and fell out of medal contention when he fell off the apparatus. Disappointing end for him, but he did much better then expected, finished 6th when he was 22nd on qualifications. 

Germany also picked up their 1st all around medal since the 1930s… that's a super long time ago… historical moment for them too, and a stunning floor routine by Nguyen to push him into 2nd place. 

Poor boy from Ukraine - finished 4th and just our of medals again.

But the man who stole the show was clearly the cute Uchimura… almost perfect if not for that kneeling down in floor ex. He managed to pull everything together today, not a single score below 15. He didn’t have such a huge lead this time compared to last year… mostly cos of the floor ex mistake… commentators say it claimed him a full point deduction. Ouch. Still… 1.6 points ahead is a clear lead. No more controversial wins for Japan this time.

Quite a lot of guys fell/step out today tho. Failed vaults, stepping out in floor, falling off pommel or not completing the dismount properly… Make me really wonder how the superman does it. Perfectly nailing it when and where so many other have fell. He almost makes things look too easy… like after watching him perform i take for granted that hitting 15s is easy when it certainly is not.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that he started off on pommels - what i would think is his weakness event. Clear it when you're still fresh and strong. Still i was hoping for a perfect (as in, clean) performance from him for floor but he didn’t nail that landing. Tanaka too, he landed on his butt on one of his landing… guess it could be partly due to the more springy floor that athletes have commented about. I hope superman can nail it on floor tho. Zuo kai is a strong opponent indeed.

Might it have been different if tanaka had been in the same group as his teammate and started on pommels? You know, do it at the start when u're the strongest, before getting spent little by little with each event… idk… but tanaka didn’t do well on pommels in qualification and team finals either… i guess its just his weak link, and weak enough to kill his medal hopes. The best group got on pommels 2nd tho, and we saw quite a few failed performance too, so perhaps its not that much to do with order… i guess if your skill isn't good enough it doesn’t matter if you have the strength or not. Orozco failed his dismount and couldn’t get back after that… leyva didn’t perform well on pommels either but he manage to finish strong on high bars for a bronze in the end.

So there's only floor finals and p bars to watch for japan men's gym team. I think they really gave up on a lot of events in hopes of getting the team gold but it just didn’t work out when yamamuro crashed out. I swear they could have picked up a few more medals (not gold tho i guess) if they did better for qualifications… kohei was 2nd on high bars, yamamuro also picked up medals in pommel and rings last year. i believe they gave up on those events to focus on the team finals… which was just not meant to be.

Meh. 4 time world champion for uchimura… his name will live on in the history of gymnastics forever...

and gosh… that guy's my age. Makes it sad to think of how i screwed up my years at uni and am slacking ard watching olympics instead of looking for a job. sighs. :X