KÅhei Uchimura
Kohei Uchimura (Japanese内 村 航 平, Kohei Uchimura, born January 3, 1989 in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture) is a Japanese gymnast. Among his greatest achievements include the income of six world titles, including 2009 to 2013 four times in a row victory in the all around. In 2012, he became Olympic champion in the same discipline. At a height of 1.60 meters his competition weight is 53 kilograms.
Life
Childhood and education
Kohei Uchimura is the son of Kazuhisa and Shuko Uchimura, who also went about the gymnastics. Birth enthroned as Emperor Akihito few days after Uchimura and thus the Heisei era was proclaimed on January 8, 1989, the parents changed his name to Kohei what " navigate [ to / of ] Hei [be - era ] " roughly means.
The mother wanted to give her son claims to be " above all the spirit and attitude of an athlete ." He started in 1992 at the age of three years with the gymnastics in the still operated today by his father training hall in Nagasaki. There he enjoyed as a child on the trampoline at somersaults and twists. At the age of six years, he participated in the first turn competitions. In his youth Uchimura held in competitive situations often not withstand the pressure. Also, he lacked the strength of his competitors, which he tried to make up with strict training. After graduation Uchimura began more seriously to train.
At the age of 15 years Uchimura left his family and moved to Tokyo in 2004. There he trained at the prestigious Asahi Seimei Gymnastics Club under Takashi Kobayashi and counted Naoya Tsukahara, Team Olympic champion in Athens in 2004, his training partners. Kobayashi described Uchimura looking back on his arrival as a " skinny boy, with coarse abilities ". He let his protégé send a grueling strength training by letting him repeatedly perform the same movements for hours daily. These included the start of the jump or the back and forth swing on the high bar. Kobayashi Uchimura admired for its great concentration, which he placed in the exercises of the day. 2005, the athlete first participated in an international tournament, the Japanese International Junior Championships. A year later he was admitted to the Japanese national team of seniors.
Climb to the world's best all-rounder
In March 2007, Uchimura first appeared in a seniors tournament in Europe in appearance, the World Cup Internationaux de France in Paris. There he reached the apparatus finals on vault, where he took third place behind winner Marian DRAGULESCU from Romania and Frenchman Thomas Bouhail. Ninth place he narrowly failed at the finals on the ground. In May 2008, in Tianjin, China Uchimura was able to record his first World Cup victory on the ground. Three months later he was at the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing also the Japanese national team, in spite of a fall of Uchimura on pommel horse behind the People's Republic of China won the silver medal in the team competition. The Turner suffered at this time from a painful wrist injury. Despite a further fall on pommel horse Uchimura won the silver medal behind the Chinese Yang Wei in two days later taking place around final. It was the first all-around medal by a Japanese gymnast since the Olympic victory Koji Gushikens at the Summer Olympics in 1984. In the apparatus finals at the bottom Uchimura reached the victory of the Chinese Zou Kai fifth place. In the same year won the 19 -year-old, who had announced to Olympia to try to lead the Japanese Gymnastics ( " After that I knew where I stand in the world and that gold is accessible to me here " ), the first Japanese champion in all-around with the seniors. It was the first victory of a teenager since Naoya Tsukaharas success in 1996.
Following the resignation Yang Weis Uchimura became in the following years at the World Championships the dominant all-rounder. The World Gymnastics Championships 2009 in London he won the all-around title with 91.500 points for the first time. With his victory, he had more than three points ahead of his second-placed compatriot Kazuhito Tanaka and received the best marks in four out of six devices (floor, rings, jump and stretch ). Despite not recovering from injuries at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships 2010 in Rotterdam ( shoulder injury ) and 2011 in the domestic Tokyo (ankle compression), he managed to win the all-around title three times in a row as the first athlete in the history of gymnastics. In 2011 he also scored on his winning top marks to four devices (floor, pommel horse, rings and parallel bars ) and also won the floor final, again with the team silver and bronze on high bar.
Critics on all six devices Uchimura, who renounced in 2011 to the newly introduced lucrative multi-discipline World Cup series in favor of the preparation for the World Championships at home, shows the most difficult elements and combinations with an elegance and ease as they previously never in modern Men's Gymnastics were presented. This makes it succeed Uchimura also with specialists in the individual devices to keep up. In 2012 he led until the Summer Olympic Games in London on the unofficial list of geturnten D note with 39.3 points. The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun dubbed him at the 2011 World Championships at home as "unprecedented Superman". However, Uchimura itself measures the touch judges in gymnastics at no meaning. It represents the quality of his exercises on lessons title and claims to have tried at every sporting event with diligence to exercise, always looking for the ultimate performance. As the largest Turner history Uchimura called the White Russians Vitaly Scherbo, the Barcelona won six gold medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics. His goal is claims to get even more admirable achievements as Scherbo did this.
Olympic season in 2012 and fourth world title in the all around
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, the extreme sports -focused Uchimura mainly prepared a year ago alone and often appeared as the first before all the other athletes for morning training. However, at the beginning of the Olympic gymnastics competition at the always clarified and ensure that proper Japanese crashed in the all-around qualification of the horizontal bar and pommel horse, pulling a only ninth in the final of the top 24. In the team competition, the Japanese team still fell by a faulty outlet Uchimura at the last device, again, the pommel horse, the silver medal in fourth place back. Only after a protest by the Japanese team lead and ten times video study by the competition judges of the International Gymnastics Federation FIG Uchimura Seitpferdübung was subsequently revised upwards by 0.7 points and the team demoted back to second place. It was the first time that such correction took effect on Olympic medal decision. Two days later, in the all around final, Uchimura presented significantly improved. He took over after three of six passes the overall lead and gave it does not let up until the last device. With 92 690 points was Uchimura Olympic champion before the German Marcel Nguyen ( 91 031 ) and the winner of the qualification Danell Leyva ( 90 698 ) from the USA. A few days later he won the silver medal in the floor final behind the Chinese defending champion Zou Kai. On parallel bars to Uchimura qualified originally as a fifth. So when his fellow countrymen Kazuhito and Yusuke Tanaka in qualifying lay before him, he had a control according to which provides a maximum of two per country final starter, avoid participating.
In the post-Olympic season in 2013 succeeded Uchimura at the beginning of October aligned world championships in Antwerp for the fourth time in a row the title in the all around competition ahead of his compatriot Ryohei Kato and win the German Hambüchen. A second gold medal followed together with the Chinese Lin Chaopan on bars while on the ground and on the horizontal bar in each case was able to secure the bronze medal itself.
Private life
Kohei Uchimura, the Japanese gymnasts Koji Gushiken counted among other things, to his idols, lives in Saitama. He graduated in March 2011 from his studies at the Nippon Sport Science University Private ( NSSU ) and started as an employee of Konami Sports & Life. He belongs to the company -Turn team. Uchimura is one reading historical books about his hobbies.