Kenzo Shirai, who won the gold medal in the men's team at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in gymnastics, has announced his retirement.
24-year-old Shirai participated in the Tokyo Olympics representative selection meeting held until this month, but missed the representative for the second consecutive tournament.
What is Kenzo Shirai?
Kenzo Shirai is 24 years old from Kanagawa prefecture.
He grew up in a gymnastics family with his parents as instructors and two older brothers as athletes, and took advantage of his strong twist to become second only to Kohei Uchimura in the domestic competition that he participated in in the third year of junior high school in 2011. It was.
After that, he acquired world-class skills with outstanding jumping power and twisting speed, and in 2013 he won the world championship, which was the youngest in Japanese history at the age of 17, and participated in the second year of high school. ..
He won the gold medal for the second time in the 2015 World Championship, and at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, which was his first appearance the following year, he contributed to winning the gold medal for the Japanese team together with Uchimura as a core member of the men's team.
He also won a bronze medal in the vault at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
In addition, Shirai has succeeded in new techniques one after another, such as stretching backwards and somersaulting four times, and has three techniques for "Yuka" and three for "Vault Horse", for a total of six techniques with his own name.
After the Olympics, aiming to play an active role as an all-rounder competing in the 6th event, at the 2017 World Championship, he won a gold medal with Yuka and a vault, and Uchimura abstained due to injury. I won the top bronze medal.
However, after that, he suffered from ankle and shoulder injuries and couldn't show his true ability, so he missed the position of representative at the 2019 World Championships.
Even at the Tokyo Olympics representative selection, he missed the Olympic representatives for the second consecutive tournament, such as finishing in 29th place only in the second event at the NHK Cup last month.