Paris, France, August 6, 2024: From Olympic obscurity to the pride of Paris.
That’s the remarkable rise of Japanese gymnast Shinnosuke Oka, who came to Paris as an Olympic rookie and left with three gold medals and one bronze as the leading male gymnast at the Games.
Aged only 20, Oka was a member of Japan’s gold medal-winning men’s team at the start of the artistic gymnastics competition.
He followed up by upstaging his teammate and defending champion Daiki Hashimoto in the men’s all-around final – effectively establishing himself as the world’s top male gymnast – and then added a third gold on the final day on Monday on the men’s horizontal bar.
Just as a bonus, he also won bronze in the men’s parallel bars.
"Carving out my place in history feels amazing," he said. "Competing at such a high level amongst legendary names is an honour."
When asked for his winning formula, Oka replied: "That’s a hard one. In the competition itself you never know what’s going to happen until it’s over. I managed to do my routine without making any mistakes, and that brought me the gold."
He said that, for the time being, he was content with his routine and had no immediate plans to upgrade his moves, especially at such a young age.
“I always do better on my execution score, so, for now, difficult manoeuvres aren't what I should be focusing on. That’s the advice I got. I worked hard on making my current routine as perfect as possible."
In their review of Paris 2024, the International Gymnastics Federation also highlighted the two gold medals of Carlos Yulo for the Philippines – the first medal of any colour for the National Olympic Committee in gymnastics.
Yulo won gold in the men’s floor exercise and, the next day, in men’s vault to propel him to superstar status back home and only the country’s second Olympic champion after weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz at Tokyo 2020.
Elsewhere, Liu Yang (CHN) and Zou Jingyuan (CHN) successfully defended their Tokyo 2020 victories on men’s rings and men's parallel bars, respectively.