At the Japan gymnastics championships, which serve as the selection for the World Championships, qualifying rounds were held for men and women, and Sho Tanigawa and Kazuki Minami, who are aiming to make the national team, scored high scores in their favorite events and appealed for their place in the national team.

The selection for the World Championships will be based on the results of three events: the All Japan Championships in April, the NHK Cup last month, and the All Japan Championships that started on 4 September.

The men's national team consists of five players, three of whom have already been decided: Hashimoto, who won gold medals at both the Olympics and the World Championships and won three consecutive Japan Championships and NHK Cups, Kazuma Kaya, who finished second in the NHK Cup, and Teppei Miwa, who finished third in the NHK Cup.

The remaining two players were decided based on the results of the three national team selection tournaments and how much they can contribute to the goals when the team is formed in the overall team, and Tanigawa, Minami, and Chiba Kenta are in contention.

In qualifying, Tanigawa competed in three events, and showed a smooth turn on the pommel horse, which was the key, and scored 10.3, which was the third highest score in this event, and also appealed for his place in the national team with a steady performance of 5.3 on the parallel bars, which is his specialty.

In addition, Minami, who is good at Yuka, decided on the big technique "Rudolph Half" with F difficulty from the beginning, and showed one difficult technique after another.

Although the composition was less difficult than planned, he put it together well and scored 2.3, the second place in this event.

The women's team, meanwhile, will compete for the remaining one spot on the World Championship team.

Urara Ashikawa showed a steady performance on the balance beam, where she won the gold medal at the Ototoshi World Championships, and came one step closer to the national team.

The final will be played on the 3th.

Sho Tanikawa: "I want to give a performance worthy of a national team"

Sho Tanigawa said, "I was able to put on a good performance in my own way even though I was quite nervous that the national team was at stake. By doing that, we were able to ride the good waves and do other events."

Ahead of the final on the 11th, he was enthusiastic, saying, "I want to avenge the disappointment of failing on pommel horse at last year's World Championships on the world stage one more time.

Ikki Minami: "I want to raise the difficulty and attack to the fullest"

Ikki Minami said, "I couldn't perform very well, and although I tried to make the composition more difficult, it turned out to be a shrinking performance and I couldn't connect the techniques. We just have to do it tomorrow, so we want to raise the level of difficulty and attack as much as possible."

On top of that, he said for joining the national team, "If I perform well, the national team will follow me, so I want to do my best."

Urara Ashikawa "I'll do my usual performance calmly"

Ashikawa Urara said, "I was nervous, but I was able to keep my composure and play without making any major mistakes because I was able to practice properly, which gave me confidence for tomorrow. I will do my best to perform calmly and carefully as usual."