Certainly at the Olympic all-around final in Tokyo this Wednesday (12.15 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ZDF and on Eurosport), this is above all: At the end of the day there will be three different men on the podium than at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. What a shame, the nostalgic person might think: Who would not have liked to see a re-run of the duel between the great gymnasts Kohei Uchimura and Oleg Vernjajew? But the Uchimura era is over, and Ukrainian Vernjajew tested positive for meldonium last November and received a four-year ban. He has announced that he will take action, but it is too late for Tokyo.

Speaking of nostalgia: It is quite understandable that the present in the Tokyo gymnasium triggers a certain discomfort. For example, instead of the possible 12,000 spectators, only a few people could say goodbye to Kohei Uchimura or Oksana Chusovitina, who moved to tears after her eighth participation in the Olympic Games, into retirement. But Chusovitina is also the absolute exception. The rule in this sport, in which the physical strain is extreme and the maximum performance age is reached early, is much more that two participations at the highest level are rare.

This is another reason why nostalgia is simply out of place in gymnastics.

The true top nations have always formed new experts for each Olympic cycle.

The following newcomers will present themselves on Wednesday: the Japanese Hashimoto Daiki, 19 years old, who showed the best all-around competition in the qualification, and Kitazono Takeru, 18 years old, the two Chinese Sun Wei and Xiao Ruoteng, both 25, but Olympic Newbies, and Joe Frazer, 22 years old.

They all did some impressive gymnastics in the team final on Monday evening.

The Russian will was very great

But this team final was decided by the Russian gymnasts, above all Nikita Nagorny and Artur Dalaloyan, who are also both qualified for the all-around competition. They are the all-around world champions of 2019 and 2018 respectively. The team competition is traditionally the most important of all Olympic decisions, not only for the representatives of Russia, but also for Japan and China. But the will to win this title in Russian men's gymnastics has been particularly strong recently.

Maybe also a kind of nostalgia, a mood filled with the very definite longing that it is finally time again. A quarter of a century has passed since the last Russian triumph, back in 1996 in Atlanta, when "Russia" first competed as such. The entire Olympic cycle had only one goal. That became clear at the latest at the 2019 World Cup in Stuttgart, when the Russians secured team victory for the first time in World Cup history.

They were all very happy, but head coach Andrei Rodionenko remained sober: "We have new programs and new gymnasts here and the most important thing is how we prepare them for next year." Even the gymnasts said the world title was just a step the only thing that really counts: team gold in Tokyo. In Japan, of all places, where the biggest contenders for this victory and defending champions from Rio should have a home advantage.