Uchimura and Biles: gymnasts who can do everything

Having some time ago entered the top ranks of world gymnastics, Japan’s Kohei Uchimura and American Simone Biles are heading to the Rio Olympics seeking to triumph in events that others can’t even dream about.

It’s a rare thing for there to be such clear favorites in Olympic artistic gymnastics. For the U.S. team, if the 19yearold Biles wins it would be their second consecutive team gold and seventh consecutive podium appearance.

And for Uchimura, going gold in Rio would be yet another triumph, given that he has not been vanquished in the allaround since 2009 and won a sixth consecutive world allaround title in Scotland in 2015.

There are, so far, only two examples of male gymnasts who have successfully defended their Olympic titles in consecutive Games: the Soviet Union’s Victor Chukarin in 1952 and 1956 and Japan’s Sawao Kato in 1964 and 1968. If Uchimura, 25, can do the same having taken the gold in London in 2012 he would be the third athlete to do so.

But the victory “King Kohei” wants now is just the one he has not attained: the team gold. After China won the team gold in gymnastics at the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games, the Japanese were able to triumph over their eternal rivals in the last World games, and repeating that at the Olympics would be the icing on the cake that Uchimura has been working on baking in recent years.

He has said, however, that he is feeling just the same this year in Rio as he felt at any other competition, and that concerns him because he knows it’s not normal.

And it recently became known that he was shocked to find out that he had run up a halfmillion yen ($4,885) roaming phone bill playing Pokemon Go since arriving in Rio, something that may have thrown him off his stride.

Meanwhile, China will be battling for its third team gold with a squad with only one Olympic veteran Zhang Chenglong.

In women’s gymnastics, Simone Biles will try to prolong U.S. dominance in the overall competition, extending the string of Olympic titles won by Carly Patterson in 2004, Nastia Liukin in 2008 and Gabrielle Douglas in 2012.

She has won the world allaround championship for the past three years and speculation is that her Olympic debut may see her grab up to five gold medals.

“She’s a machine in the four events, but a supermachine in the floor exercises and a supermachine on the balance beam,” according to Spain’s Lucia Guisado, adding that only “one of the Chinese or Russians” would be capable of robbing her of the golds.

The four gymnastic events Guisado referred to are the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercises