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Uchimura on his favorite device: the horizontal bar
Photo: Kiyoshi Ota / Getty Images
The Japanese all-around Olympic champion Kohei Uchimura announced his retirement on Tuesday, ending the career of one of the best male gymnasts in history.
This was announced by the management of the 33-year-old.
Uchimura, known as "King Kohei" in Japan, won a total of seven Olympic medals in Beijing, London and Rio, including three gold medals.
Only at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, where Uchimura has trained since his youth, did he miss out last year.
Uchimura won all world and Olympic titles in all-around competitions from 2009 to 2016 - an unprecedented success. At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, he was the first man in 44 years to stand on the podium in two consecutive Olympic Games in an individual all-around competition. At world championships, the 33-year-old with a competition weight of 52 kilograms and a height of 1.62 meters won a total of ten gold medals, plus another five silver medals and four bronze medals.
From 2019, however, Uchimura had to struggle more and more with shoulder problems and other injuries.
Uchimura therefore decided at the end of 2019 to concentrate on the horizontal bar in order to support the Japanese team at their fourth Olympic Games.
He was proud to compete in the Games on home soil, but his Olympic career came to an abrupt end in Tokyo when he lost his grip on the bar and fell to the ground, failing to qualify for the final.
At that time he said: "At the last three Olympic Games I took part in, I was always able to show what I trained in competition, but I can no longer do that." And further: "I have passed my zenith.
I just have to calmly accept that. "
His last competition was at the World Cup in October in his hometown of Kitakyushu.
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