Shinnosuke Oka competes in the parallel bars. GETTY IMAGES

The Japanese gymnast has won a thrilling gold medal victory. He has already won team gold with Japan, and now he has been the most complete competitor. China's Zhang Boeing and Xiao Ruoteng took silver and bronze.

Gymnastics is another one of those Olympic sports that gives out several medals across a variety of categories. There are specialists on a single apparatus as well as those who master several, and then the thrilling team competitions where athletes competing against each other in the aforementioned events instead work together to win for their country.




The most valuable medals are the individual all-around medals. The gymnasts have to go through the different apparatuses to be the ones with the most points after the six performances. 

Shinnosuke Oka has shown that it is not necessary to be the best in everything. He did not score the best in any of the six apparatuses. But he had a great performance on five of them. The rings were the only exercise in which he was below 14 points. The best score was obtained in the parallel bars, with a 15.100.

Medallists pose for a selfie during the podium ceremony GETTY IMAGES
Medallists pose for a selfie during the podium ceremony GETTY IMAGES

The last rotation of the competition took the medal favourites to the fixed bar. Oka got a score of 14.500, but there was still Boeing's competition to go, who had a chance to take the gold. His exercise was more difficult. He got a better score than Oka, 14.633, but it was not enough to overtake the Japanese. He had to settle for silver, and his compatriot Ruoteng for bronze.

Oka's total score was 86.832 points. Boeing was 86.599 and Ruoteng 86.364. A very close final. The surprise was that the other Japanese, Daiki Hashimoto, the Tokyo 2020 champion, missed out on a medal.



It is the fourth consecutive time that Japan has won the men's individual all-around competition at the Games. At London 2012 and Rio 2016 the gold medal went to Kohei Uchimura, a gymnastics legend. Now Oka, who is only 20 years old, is the new king of gymnastics with this triumph in Paris. The queen, of course, is the American Simone Biles.

This was Japan's eighth gold at the Paris Games. China has the same number of golds and is the only country ahead of the Japanese on the medal table. More than a rivalry, as has also been seen in gymnastics.