Japan Quintet Grabs Gold in Men's Artistic Gymnastics
夢みたい。人生で一番心臓に悪い日。でも間違いなくそれ以上に人生で一番幸せな日。予選4位からの下克上。仲間を信頼してよかった。頼もしい先輩方ほんとにありがとうございました。この経験を無駄にせずにまた種目別ゆか、跳馬頑張りますpic.twitter.com/iZaySGcp6N
— Kenzo shirai (@kenzo8824) 2016年8月9日
I wonder how many of you know that Japan once led the world in artistic gymnastics - dominating the world championships for ten years in a row in 1960-70s. Japan also once topped the world in table tennis, overpowering the Europeans who had monopolized the game for generations.
Symbolically, Japan met a formidable adversary in China in both sports and has never since come close enough to overtake that country. Politics aside, Japan and China have constantly been pitted against each other in sports, always the latter coming from behind to overtake the former.
Allow me a few passing lines on table tennis to paint the picture right. Table tennis is perhaps the most typical of all as the whole story of China's magical advance in table tennis started with China's Premier Zhou En-lai as he invited coaches from Japan to orient Chinese hopefuls.
The history repeated itself in artistic gymnastics. In a nutshell, China was quick to learn from Japan and dethroned the Olympiad champion Japan in a flash. That was 12 years or 3 Olympic years ago in 2004 at Athens.
But the history turned a fresh page yesterday at Rio de Janeiro as the Japanese quintet led by Kouhei Uchimura came from far behind to clinch the championship in a dramatic series of performance that stunned the luckiest spectators of the century. The Japanese team marked 274.094 silencing China mute (271.122).
The amusing thing is that China had placed first in the elimination rounds ony to trail behind Russia and Japan. Just the opposite was the case of Japan - coming from way behind, sixth, to grab the totem pole.
What does that prove? Why, it's the dawn of another Japanese era in artistic gymnastics - naturally. (Nathan Shiga)
