TOKYO — Japanese
gymnastics legend
Kohei Uchimura brought the curtain down on his career
Saturday at an exhibition event in Tokyo to send one of the sport's all-time
greats into retirement.
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The 33-year-old performed on all six
apparatus to give the crowd one last glimpse of the sublime talent that made him
a triple
Olympic gold medalist and a six-time all-around world champion.
He appeared alongside a group of Japanese
gymnasts, including his fellow gold medal-winning teammates from the
Rio Games
and reigning all-around Olympic champion Daiki Hashimoto.
Uchimura looked calm and relaxed as the
event began, but soon began to frown in deep concentration as his perfectionist
streak took hold.
"The ideal I aim for is that you have
to make it like a work of art," he said.
"You have to go beyond the confines of
gymnastics and make the audience think it's like they're looking at a painting
or something."
Uchimura won back-to-back all-around
Olympic titles in 2012 and 2016, and reigned as world champion for eight years starting
from 2009.
His body began to show signs of wear and
tear in recent years, and he dropped the defense of his all-around title at
last year's Tokyo Olympics to focus on the horizontal bar.
He failed to reach the final, falling in
qualifying.
The physical strain was apparent on
Saturday, with Uchimura saying he was "reminded just how brutal it is to
compete in all six events".
"My whole body was sore right from the
moment I landed after the final apparatus," he said.
"It made me think it's a good thing I’m
retiring."
Uchimura received video tributes from a
string of his former rivals, including Britain's Max Whitlock and Epke
Zonderland of the Netherlands.
Hashimoto, who will try to emulate
Uchimura's feat of back-to-back Olympic all-around titles at the
2024 Paris Games, said the retiring legend was "a demon at manipulating his
body".
Uchimura intends to stay involved in
gymnastics in some capacity and said he enjoyed his final performance.
"It's been a while since I performed in
front of so many people and it was a great stage to perform on all six
apparatus," he said.
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