Kenzō Shirai
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Kenzō Shirai | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kanagawa | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Residence | South Tokyo, Japan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 162 cm (5 ft 4 in)[1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 51 kg (112 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Level | Senior International Elite | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Years on national team | 2013–2021 (JPN) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Club | Tsurumi Gymnastics Club | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
College team | Nippon Sport Science University (Nittaidai) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Head coach(es) | Yoshiaki Hatakeda (club) Hisashi Mizutori (national) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Former coach(es) | Masaki Shirai (father) Norimi Shirai (mother) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eponymous skills | Shirai/Shirai-Nguyen (FX): bwd (straight) quad (4/1) full
Shirai 2 (FX): fwd/front triple (3/1)-twisting layout (fwds) Yurchenko triple twistShirai 2 (VT): Y Shirai 3 (VT): "full (1/1) on– (back layout) double full off" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Retired | June 16, 2021[2] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Kenzō Shirai (白井 健三, Shirai Kenzō, born August 24, 1996) is a Japanese men's former athlete of artistic gymnastics (AG). Born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, he, a graduate of Kishine High School, joined the Nippon Sport Science University (Nittaidai). Shirai took the team gold, and a bronze on individual vault with the Japanese men's AG (MAG) national team at the 2016 Summer Olympics (OG) in Rio de Janeiro while more major wins were from the World Championships (WC).
Early life
Like his older brothers, Shirai started gymnastics with parents Masaki and Norimi,[3] first coaches and home club owners. Shirai said, "For as long as I can remember, I was a gym rat." Instead of paying day care, parents took him to their work. Practicing a six-hour session 5–7 days per week, Shirai attended regular school,[4] which was atypical for an elite athlete. After high school in March 2015, he was accepted to attend/represent new home club of Nittaidai on the southern Tokyo border where other Japanese gymnasts of men and women's AG (WAG) also trained, including mentor Kōhei Uchimura.
Career
Six eponyms, three each on
2013
Barely 17, Shirai was youngest man participating at the
Three out of all eponymous skills for MAG were also officially verified after in
2014
Shirai secured Japan team silver at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning—only 0.1 trailing winner and host China. He made individual FX and VT finals again. On FX, despite having much larger D-score, he struggled with the execution score (E-score). In his 3rd pass, one step out-of-bounds incurred 0.1 penalty that cost him the gold—just 0.017 behind a surprised Russian winner, Denis Ablyazin. On VT, despite top E-scores, Shirai’s lower-difficulty 2nd VT ranked him 4th.[7]
2015
At the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow with Japan's national MAG team, Shirai took all-around (AA) gold in team finals for first time since 1978. Shirai posted men’s top FX score of the whole meet, and it was also the only value above 16.000 points. In the individual event finals, Shirai qualified for both FX and VT, winning former and ranking 7th on latter. Posting a 16.233, the 7.6-difficulty FX routine started with at least 0.8 above the rest. His score was extreme due to high connection bonuses of various skills and combinations that ended passes facing forwards with blind landings, risking his combination lines. He also began competing "double (2/1)-somersault" (2 revolutions) skills on FX with high consistency.
Over Toyota Cup in December, Shirai verified his 4th eponym for MAG—the Shirai 3 on FX, or (a) "triple-double" layout. The extremely high difficulty skill let him become one of the men's gymnasts, who originated one of just four eponymous skills with then top MAG D-score of H (0.8) until their next new, top I (0.9) was created to help score future hardest skills.
2016
2016 Summer Olympics
At 19 years, 11 months and 15 days old, Shirai became Japan's youngest and only teen male gymnast in history to ever win Olympic gold after Japanese men's squad took the title in the team AA (TAA) finals. Both of Shirai's contributions for team total on VT and FX with 15.633 and 16.133 respectively were top values of his two apparatuses at the entire event.
In the
In the FX finals, the twice and reigning world FX champ was an overwhelming favourite with extremely high D-score and great E-scores, but got landing issues in ½, 3 of 6, his passes then. In interviews, Shirai and American Sam Mikulak, top qualifier to end up 8th, expressed disappointment with audiences' sportsmanship whose boos/jeers grew loud/hostile for non-Brazilian sets as time passed.[8] Briton Max Whitlock, the unexpected winner, had earlier draw, avoiding crowd input.
2017
At February's
At the
2018
In March 2018, Shirai competed at the American Cup in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. In spite of being the competition's favourite, he only placed sixth due to a few errors and falls on HB and pommel horse (PH) while also underperforming the infamous-difficult FX routine. Shirai recovered by winning the Tokyo World Cup after a month.
In a series of domestic competitions being held locally between April and August, Shirai won IAA silver medals at the All-Japan Championships and NHK Trophy, and took the All-Japan Student Championships. Shirai was also able to win an individual gold medal on FX with silver medal on VT at the All-Japan Event Championships.
At the
2019
On April 7, 2019, Shirai joined competitive circuit this year at the FIG Individual All-Around World Cup 2019, or 2019 Tokyo World Cup in Tokyo, Japan. Like 2018, he was supposed to start his season off at the 2019 American Cup, but withdrew to treat left ankle injury,[9] which was sustained about a week before he began travelling. Due to the injury, Shirai simplified certain skills in his routines for the competition here in Tokyo, which became especially noticeable when he performed on floor—his strongest signature event—recycling past skills/combos. Changes included starting his current floor routine to old opening pass RO–BH–3½ twist–punch double twist. Instead of the Shirai 3 opening pass, one of two hardest skills then for men's floor, he also only did a triple full as the final pass, not the Shirai, his famous quad twist. Shirai ultimately failed to defend his gold medal from 2018, but he did manage to capture bronze with the combined total of 82.964, despite still recovering from injury. The 2018 bronze medallist, Sam Mikulak of the United States (86.599), improved on standings, and won gold. Japan's Wataru Tanigawa (85.665) defended his silver. US analyst for NBC Tim Daggett said, "(M)an, myth, legend ... capable of doing ... many things ... people thought were ... literally impossible before Shirai did them."[10]
On April 26–28, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 All-
On May 18–19, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 NHK Trophy in
On June 21–23, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 All-Japan Apparatus Championships in Takasaki, Japan, hoping he would do well enough to secure a spot on the Japanese men's national team and compete as part of the next world championships held in the autumn of 2019. It was ultimately not meant to be his season though. Shirai qualified for three individual event finals, which were floor exercise, vault and the horizontal bar, ranking second, fourth and sixth respectively. In such finals, he proceeded to finish in third (14.900), fifth (14.433) and eighth (11.200) place respectively for each of these apparatuses too. Ranking ahead of Shirai on floor exercise were Kazuki Minami with a total score of 15.033, and Naoto Hayasaka with a total value of 15.000. Their top finisher on vault was Keitaro Okubo, posting the average combined score of 15.233, and the winner on the horizontal bar was Hirohito Kohama with number totalling 14.766. Shirai's floor difficulty values had remained on top among all the finalists. Shirai, however, needed additional work in the execution, which could have been cleaner, and would reflect in the routine's E-score after. Also, vault D-score values were comparatively lesser—only one of their lowest at 5.2—and needed higher base scores before he could seriously challenge the top vaulters.
In 2019, for the first time since Shirai's debut competition in 2013, he did not make the Japanese men's national AG team, and hence, he was excluded to compete at the 2019 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on October 4–13, 2019. Shirai's 2019 performances at competition were noticeably slowed down by a stubborn injury of this nagging left ankle, which resulted in his inability to compete optimally during the 2019 All-Japan Apparatus Championships when the results then, and at the 2019 NHK Trophy, decided all athletes, who would join Japan's national team at the next Worlds. His best chance was to get one of two spots available to individual Japanese men, namely for one or both of Shirai's signature events, FX and/or VT, but he just managed 3rd and 5th places on individual FX and VT, which made him not qualify for the WC, and thus unable to defend the 2018 world medals. As Shirai was not the only high-profile absentee since Kōhei Uchimura was also missing due to injuries,[12] Japanese men had sent a fairly inexperienced team to these Worlds where the men's competition was dominated by other nations. Shirai worked hard to return to competition form after an extended period of time to try and recover from various injuries. Hence, he was very rusty on all apparatuses.
On December 14–15, 2019, Shirai again competed at the local 2019 Toyota International Cup (or Gymnastics Competition) in
2020/2021
Injuries and retirement
On December 10–13, 2020, then postgraduate at Nittaidai, Shirai competed again at the 2020 All-Japan Championships in Takasaki (2 years), and not well as in past years, placing individually only 18th on AA (167.196), and 4th on FX (15.166). Japan's national AG federation repurposed it into the extra local event in OG qualifying. This helped coaches finalise most in-form roster closest to start of COVID-delayed 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo that got postponed to next summer with a 6-man squad—4 for TAA with team bronze win at the 2018 World Championships as Shirai contributed on FX, VT and HB to team's total,[13] plus 2 more for individual events.
Due to public health issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were delayed by one year until July 23–August 8, 2021.[14] Our epidemic made many qualifiers to OG put off/cancel their events too.[15] In 2020, Shirai reluctantly began to consider retirement because of persistent injuries, but returned early 2021 to compete at the 2021 All-Japan Championships, still trying to make it to the local OG. After not qualifying, he announced the immediate retirement from AG on June 16, 2021,[2] also missing him the 2021 World Championships in home replacement city Kitakyushu. Shirai left behind legacy of 13 major medals, and 6 eponyms.
Competitive history
Year | Championship | Team | MAG's Individual Events | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AA | FX
|
PH | SR
|
VT
|
PB
|
HB | |||
2013 | |||||||||
World Championships | — | 4 | |||||||
2014 | |||||||||
World Championships | |||||||||
2015 | |||||||||
World Championships | 7 | ||||||||
2016 | |||||||||
Olympic Games | 4 | ||||||||
2017 | |||||||||
World Championships |
— | ||||||||
2018 | |||||||||
World Championships |
7 |
Eponymous skills
Shirai is officially credited with 6 original skill names. Current 2022–2024 quad's D-scores below held up since competing last in the FIG's earlier 2017–2021 CoP for MAG:
Apparatus | Name(s) | Description(s) | Difficulty | Verification | Competition Achieved |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen* | backward (bwd) quadruple (4/1)-twisting (back) layout (somersault), or quadruple twist (straight back) somersault backwards (bwds) | F (0.6) | Automatic | 2013 AG World Championships | |
Shirai 2 | forward (fwd) or front triple (3/1)-twisting straight (somersault), or (forward or front layout) triple twist somersault forwards (fwds) | ||||
Shirai 3 | backward triple-twisting double (2/1) straight (back somersault), and aka (a) "triple (twist) double (back)" layout somersault backwards | H (0.8) | Petition1 | 2015 Toyota International Cup | |
Shirai or Shirai-Kim* | RO–BH or Y ")
|
5.6 (was 6.0) |
Automatic | 2013 AG World Championships | |
Shirai 2 | RO–BH or Y )
|
6.0 (was 6.4) |
2016 Summer Olympic Games | ||
Shirai 3 | RO–full (1/1)-twisting BH or Scherbo entry into (back layout) double twist, and aka (a) "full (twist) on–(straight back) double full (twist) off" | 5.4 | 2017 Melbourne World Cup[16] |
*Such eponymous skills have taken official names of two originators, but evolving skill factors like one athlete's greater success shortened name for only that gymnast.
1Except the Shirai 3 on FX that was verified via the
Japan's Takahiro Goshima had progressed the front layout 3 to 3½ twist, or Shirai 2 to Goshima, on floor with G (0.7) D-score at the 2017 Stuttgart Team Challenge. While the Shirai on vault was successfully competed since 2015 by other athletes like Briton Max Whitlock and China's Zhang Chenglong, Shirai always topped E-scores. Shirai first competed the Shirai 2 on vault at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a skill which was not competed by any other gymnast throughout the 2017–2021 quad.
Miscellaneous
In October 2017, as the
See also
References
- ^ "Kenzo SHIRAI". olympicchannel.com. Archived from the original on December 1, 2020. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
- ^ a b c "Rio gymnastic gold medalist Kenzo Shirai retires from competition". kyodonews.net. June 16, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2022 – via Kyodo News.
- ^ "SHIRAI Kenzo". database.fig-gymnastics.com.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "115: Kenzo Shirai – GymCastic". gymcastic.com. September 10, 2014. Archived from the original on September 25, 2015. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ "Kenzo Shirai (JPN) dominates Olympic Hopes International, Penza". Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
- ^ Universal Sports Network (October 5, 2013), Kenzo Shirai Becomes Floor Champ – Universal Sports, archived from the original on November 4, 2019, retrieved June 18, 2019
- ^ FIG Channel (January 27, 2015), HIGHLIGHTS – 2014 Artistic Worlds, Nanning (CHN) – Men's FX, PH, SR – We are Gymnastics!, archived from the original on May 9, 2021, retrieved May 8, 2020
- ^ "Brazilian gymnasts make history, but Rio crowd accused of disrespect for rivals". August 15, 2016 – via Brisbane Times.
- ^ "Mai Murakami finishes third at American Cup". March 3, 2019. Archived from the original on April 3, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019 – via Japan Times.
- ^ Ginástica Brasil (April 11, 2019), Men's AA World Cup – Tokyo 2019, archived from the original on November 4, 2019, retrieved June 17, 2019
- ^ The Gymternet (July 28, 2019), 2019 NHK Trophy Men's Results, archived from the original on July 28, 2019, retrieved July 27, 2019
- ^ "Uchimura, Shirai and Murakami to miss World Championships". olympics.com. September 1, 2019. Retrieved September 14, 2022 – via International Olympic Committee (IOC).
- ^ "Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 Qualification – Gymnastics Results". October 13, 2019. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020. Retrieved April 4, 2020 – via Gymnastics Results.
- ^ Panja, Tariq (March 28, 2020). "Tokyo Olympics Organizers Considering July 2021 for Opening Ceremony". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 4, 2020. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
- ^ "Olympic gymnastics qualification system changed following all-around World Cup cancellation". February 11, 2021. Archived from the original on February 12, 2021. Retrieved March 1, 2021 – via insidethegames.biz.
- ^ "Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique – View FigNews". fig-gymnastics.com. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved April 6, 2017 – via International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).
- ^ Sam's YoutubeChannel (October 19, 2017), Kenzo Shirai Triple Y turn!!, archived from the original on November 3, 2019, retrieved January 12, 2018
- ^ Gym FanBR (November 8, 2017), Kenzo Shirai training Uneven Bars., archived from the original on November 4, 2019, retrieved January 12, 2018
- ^ sporteverywhere (December 28, 2018), Kenzo Shirai Performing Mai Murakami's Floor Routine, archived from the original on November 3, 2019, retrieved March 3, 2019
- ^ sporteverywhere (December 21, 2018), Kenzo Shirai (JPN) in Training, archived from the original on February 29, 2020, retrieved June 5, 2020
External links
- Kenzo Shirai at the International Gymnastics Federation
- Kenzō Shirai at Olympics.com
- Kenzō Shirai at Olympedia
- Shirai (FloorEx) at gymnaflash.com
- Shirai/Kim (Vault) at gymnaflash.com