World Gymnastics Championships Tokyo 2011

Kohei Uchimura wins 3-Straight World All Around Titles

Oct 14, 2011 by Anne Phillips

Kohei Uchimura of Japan crusied to yet another World All Around title, further solidifying the belief that he may just be the best gymnast to ever live. Uchimura made history tonight by becoming the first gymnast to win 3-straight World All Around titles. In a decisive victory, he captured the gold medal with more than three points to spare.

The night began with the top group on floor, and it proceeded to be the Uchimura show through all 6 rotations. The defending World Champ stuck his triple twist dismount on floor, and flew through his pommel routine. His scores on these 2 events were enough to put him in the lead early in the evening, despite the fact that half of his competitors had already gone through vault, where scores this quad are inflated. He is just that good.

Uchimura increased his lead each time he touched the apparatus, while the rest of the field battled for the silver and bronze medals.

Philipp Boy of Germany was the surprise silver medalist at last year's Worlds. He came to Tokyo with higher expectations and struggled through the qualification round and Team Finals. Tonight he put it all together, but was still in 6th place heading into the final rotation. He competed first on high bar and delivered the routine of his life: a huge full twisting laid out kovacs, clean form, and a stuck double twisting double layout. His score of 16.066 with 7.40 difficulty was the highest score tonight on the apparatus.

The British youngster Daniel Purvis was in medal contention throughout the night but couldn't match Boy's skills on high bar. He competed a clean routine to close out a solid competition and fell just 3 tenths shy of the bronze medal.

Much to the delight of the Japanese crowd, Koji Yamamuro delivered an excellent routine on high bar to join Uchimura on the medal podium.

The American guys had high hopes coming into the finals after sitting 2nd and 3rd after the qualification round, but couldn't duplicate the performance tonight. John Orozco hit his routines but didn't seem to get into his groove until parallel bars where he nailed his routine for a 15.366. He shot up to 7th place with only high bar remaining. After a big, clean performance on high bar, he finished the day 5th place in his first World Championships. This kid is the future of Team USA.

As for Danell Leyva, the reigning US Champion had an uncharacteristic performance starting with a fall on vault, and ending with a nasty crash during his Liukin release move on high bar. It was enough to keep him from finishing the routine. While extremely disappointed, Leyva will walk away from this evening with even more motivation for the next competition.

Here are the Full Results of the 2011 World All Around Finals:

1 UCHIMURA Kohei JPN 93.631

2 BOY Philipp GER 90.530

3 YAMAMURO Koji JPN 90.255

4 PURVIS Daniel GBR 89.932

5 OROZCO John USA 89.664

6 BELYAVSKIY D. RUS 89.274

7 KUKSENKOV M. UKR 89.132

8 NGUYEN Marcel GER 88.831

9 TOMMASONE Cyril FRA 88.565

10 MARTINEZ Rafael ESP 88.089

10 KIM Seungil KOR 88.089