Kenzō Shirai

Kenzo Shirai
Nickname(s)	Mr Twist Twist Prince (Japanese)
Country represented	Japan
Born	(1996-08-24) August 24, 1996 Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
Height	161 cm (5 ft 3 in)
Discipline	Men's artistic gymnastics
Eponymous skills	Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen* (FX) - quadruple-twisting (back) layout Shirai II (FX) - triple-twisting front layout (forwards) Shirai III (FX) - triple-twisting double layout (backwards) Shirai or Shirai-Kim* (vault) - round-off back-handspring (Yurchenko) on, triple twist off Shirai II (vault) - round-off back-handspring (Yurchenko) on, 3.5 twist off (blind landing) Shirai III (vault) - round-off back-handspring (Yurchenko) full twist (Scherbo) on, double twist off
Medal record Olympic Games 2016 Rio de Janeiro Team 2016 Rio de Janeiro Vault World Championships 2013 Antwerp Floor exercise 2015 Glasgow Floor exercise 2015 Glasgow Team 2014 Nanning Team 2014 Nanning Floor exercise

Kenzo Shirai (白井 健三, Shirai Kenzō, born August 24, 1996 in Yokohama, Japan) is a Japanese artistic gymnast. At the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he won gold in the team and bronze in the vault individual event.

Personal life

Unlike many elite athletes, Shirai attended school regularly. He had one 6-hour practice between 5 to 7 days per week. ^[1]

Shirai graduated high school in March 2015 and was accepted soon after to the Nippon Sport Science University in the southern outskirts of Tokyo. This university is also where many other members of the Japanese national gymnastics team study and/or train.

Career

Shirai got started in artistic gymnastics at a very young age, after being influenced by his parents and two older brothers. ^[2] He said, "For as long as I can remember, I was a gym rat." His parents were gym owners of the Tsurumi Junior Gymnastics Club. Instead of paying for day care, they brought him to the gym. ^[3] He particularly loved to use the trampoline, which developed his extreme mastery of twisting skills.

Shirai currently has six skills named after him by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) in their Code of Points, three each on floor exercise (FX) and vault, as he was the first to perform them successfully in sanctioned major international competitions. These skills are as follows:

• Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen* on floor exercise (officially Shirai-Nguyen*, more commonly just as FX's Shirai) - a quadruple-twisting back somersault in layout or stretched (straight body) position
• Shirai II on floor exercise - a triple-twisting front somersault in layout or stretched position
• Shirai III on floor exercise - a triple-twisting double back somersault in layout or stretched position
• Shirai or Shirai-Kim* on vault (officially Shirai-Kim*, also more commonly known as just vault's Shirai; a.k.a. triple-twisting Yurchenko*****) - a round-off back-handspring entry (Yurchenko) on, triple-twisting layout off vaulting platform
• Shirai II on vault (a.k.a. 3.5-twisting Yurchenko*****) - a round-off back-handspring entry (Yurchenko) on, 3.5-twisting layout off vaulting platform to a blind landing^[4]
• Shirai III on vault [a.k.a. Scherbo***** (****) double twist] - a round-off back-handspring entry (Yurchenko) with full twist (Scherbo) on, double-twisting layout off vaulting platform

Despite his natural twisting abilities, Shirai is competent on all individual apparatuses but specialises on floor exercise and vault, which are the two events that would particularly allow him to show off those uncanny abilities and excel in performing even the most difficult and complex twisting elements and combinations ever created in gymnastics regardless of the direction he faces when he lands: forwards, backwards or sideways.

Shirai was only fourteen years old when he was first able to perform the quad-twisting layout on floor with a hard landing.^[5] Before Shirai successfully completed the 3.5-twisiting Yurchenko vault at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he was also well known for his ability to perform the triple-twisting Yurchenko***** (TTY) vault, something accomplished by only a handful of gymnasts including his teammate and role model, Kōhei Uchimura. Among other distinguishing facts, Shirai was the youngest ever member of the national men's artistic gymnastics team for Japan as well.^[6]

With Shirai III on floor exercise, Shirai also achieved the honour of sharing with Valeri Liukin of the former Soviet Union (now a naturalised US citizen as well as father and coach of 2008 Olympic women's gymnastics all-around champion, Nastia Liukin, of the USA), who originated Liukin on floor exercise (a triple back tucked somersault), and Andreas Bretschneider of Germany, who originated Bretschneider (a double-twisting Kovacs in tucked position) on the horizontal bar, to have one of the only three official highest scoring skills in all of men's gymnastics with a difficulty score of "H" assigned to it. However, Bretschneider is currently working on the still unofficial Bretschneider II (Bretschneider or double-twisting Kovacs in layout or stretched position), which will carry a difficulty score (D-score) of "I", a newly established upper end difficulty classification in men's gymnastics, should he successfully complete it in a future competition. It will then mirror the women's scoring structure created back in 2013, which added this new classification to gymnastics and currently only has one skill in it, Moors (a double-twisting double layout on floor) by Victoria Moors of Canada; only Mykayla Skinner of the USA has managed to also perform it successfully in competition since then, even though Simone Biles also of the USA has been performing it successfully as well, albeit only in training so far. It is also worth noting that only successful skills with difficulty assignments of D or higher are by tradition eligible to be named after their originators.

2013

In 2013, Shirai's sizeable talents and abilities in gymnastics were introduced to the world and into the senior circuit of international competition in a major way. Three of the six skills that currently bear his name today were originated in the same competition that year, the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp for artistic gymnastics where he also became world champion on floor exercise apparatus for the first time in his career.

In October 2013, Shirai was just seventeen years old when he competed in the 2013 World Championships^[7]It was there that he and South Korea's Kim Hee-Hoon successfully performed Shirai or Shirai-Kim* on vault, a triple-twisting Yurchenko*****, for the first time in the Olympics or World Championships to automatically qualify them the skill to bear their names.

In the same competition, Shirai also originated two new skills on floor exercise with the same naming effect. The first was another joined effort, this time with Vietnam's Nguyen Tuan Dat, in the form of a quadruple-twisting back somersault in layout position, a skill which was subsequently named Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen* on floor exercise. The second was a triple-twisting front layout, which was later named Shirai II, also on floor exercise.

Shirai would also later qualify for both the floor exercise and vault apparatus finals. In the event finals, he finished in first place on floor exercise with a routine that had D-score of 7.4, the highest in the competition. His victory margin of 0.4 over the second place competitor, Jacob Dalton of the USA, was the largest between any two athletes in the competition. He also finished in fourth place on the vault event final with an average combined score of 15.133.

By the conclusion of the 2013 World Championships, Shirai had successfully completed three original skills in a sanctioned international competition to automatically qualify each of those skills to be named after him, and become world champion on the floor exercise individual event.

2014 and 2015

In 2014, Shirai competed again at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning, China. After qualifying in first place with the same difficulty score of 7.4 as in 2013, Shirai finished in second place on the floor exercise event final with a score of 15.733. Shirai is said to be working on his execution score after a technical mistake cost him the gold medal, finishing behind Denis Ablyazin of Russia, who also won the bronze medal in the floor exercise event final at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. Even so, Ablyazin looked a bit surprised that he won. Similarly, British commentary reported that Shirai is working on his ability to perform a quintuple-twisting back somersault.^[8]

On October 31, 2015, Shirai reclaimed his world floor exercise individual apparatus title, his second, at the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow, UK. Shirai successfully delivered his extremely difficult routine, and scored 16.233 points, ahead of UK's Max Whitlock and Spain's Rayderley Zapata. The victory margin of 0.667 exceeded even the one in 2013 and was the largest among all male event finals in 2015. His 7.6 D-score was also the highest among all competitors.

2016

At the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the team from Japan qualified in first place for the team all-around final, following their success at the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow. On August 8, 2016, at the Rio Olympic Arena, the Japanese team solidified their victory with a final score of 274.094. Shirai contributed to their first-place finish in the team final with scores of 16.133 on floor and 15.633 on vault.

At Rio, Shirai had qualified to compete in both the floor exercise and vault event finals. Going into the floor exercise event final, Shirai was unquestionably the overwhelming favourite to win gold. He was not only a two-time world champion but also the current one on that event, and his regular routines always had the highest difficulty score among all competitors, reaching 7.7 in Rio while his challengers' were all still only scoring in the 6's. However, as the event final drew to a close, he only managed a score of 15.333, placing fourth overall, after having trouble with landings on three out of six tumbling passes. Later, in an interview, he explained that while he was not necessarily "nervous" during the event final, he was, on the other hand, perhaps trying too hard to perfect the execution of a typical routine he had successfully competed with numerous times before over the course of several years by then, instead of being "confident" in his training and just let "it" happen. Shirai also admitted then that he had felt a strong and familiar sense of "fear" during qualifications of both the team and floor exercise events, and while he was able to conquer his emotions and not allow them to affect his performance during the team event final, he was, however, unable to successfully do so and shake them off in time to avoid parts of it affecting his performance during the floor exercise event final. Incidentally, the floor exercise event final was subsequently won by Max Whitlock of the UK who Shirai had beaten to a silver medal in front of home crowd back at the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow.

Because of the initial disappointment of Shirai's shock floor exercise event final results, he had become ever more determined to do better in the vault event final the next day. Expectations, however, were significantly lower on him in the vault individual event as he only managed to finish in seventh place at the last world championships. Appearing not to be affected at all by any of the emotional restraints from the day before, Shirai scored an average of 15.449, 15.833 and 15.066 on each of the two vaults respectively, with the former being the highest-scoring vault of the night in both difficulty and execution, a detail which seemed insignificant at the time but ended up being very much so later in the competition. After the scores of all eight finalists were tallied at the end of the night, the average scores of Shirai and Marian Dragulescu of Romania, who also gave his best performance in an Olympic Games that evening, were high enough to tie for third place and resulted in a tie-breaking procedure specific only to the Olympic Games, which In this event had worked in Shirai's favour due to his best execution score from either of his two vaults being higher than the one by Dragulescu, to be automatically activated. This process won Shirai the bronze medal as he edged Dragulescu out into fourth place.

During the vault event final, Shirai also successfully debuted another new skill here on vault, Shirai II (a 3.5-twisting Yurchenko*****), an extremely difficult vault with blind landing. Although the only technical difference between Shirai and Shirai II on vault is a half twist more at the end, that additional move has significantly increased the difficulty level, primarily due to its now blind landing where the gymnast is unabie to spot the floor before and on landing on top of the additional block required to sufficiently power the extra time needed to properly complete a half twist more and land upright. It was therefore rewarded the second highest D-score value of 6.4 assigned to it under the 2013-2016 Code of Points with the highest of 7.0 awarded to Igor Radivilov of Ukraine for Radivilov (a handspring triple front tucked somersault), which was attempted in competition for the first time at Rio as well (even though he sat down on landing, his did land feet first and thus received a score, which consequently earned him the skill to bear his name, only for it to be subsequently banned from competition entirely after the Olympic games and removed from the 2017-2020 Code of Points when it was determined to have too high a risk of injury occurring when performing and/or training the vault).

As a result, Shirai now shares another honour of currently owning one of only two of the most difficult skills in all of men's vault with Yang Hak-Seon of South Korea, gold medalist on vault at the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo and 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, to bear their names. Both vaults, Shirai II and Yang (a front handspring, triple twist in layout position with blind landing, was successfully debuted at the 2011 World Championships) have a D-score of 6.0 under the current 2017-2020 Code of Points (Yang was also devalued from 6.4 in the previous quad).

2017

On 22 to 25 February 2017, Shirai competed at the Melbourne World Cup in Australia. In addition to floor exercise and vault, he had added three more apparatuses (still rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar) to his competition schedule. Except for pommel horse, Shirai had competed in five out of the six individual apparatuses and qualified for four of those individual event finals. During individual event qualifications, he finished first on two apparatuses (floor exercise and vault), third on one apparatus (parallel bars) and fourth on one apparatus (horizontal bar). In still rings, mistakes saw Shirai finish in tenth place with a score of 11.866 during qualifications, and he did not making the event final since only the top eight gymnasts progressed. Shirai also had a fall during qualifications on the horizontal bar, but because other gymnasts made errors as well, he managed to finish in fourth place with a score of 12.633, and as a result made it into the event final. In the four individual event finals, he raised the his game level and ended up with four medals (three golds and one silver) by the conclusion of competition. Specifically, Shirai won gold in floor exercise, vault and horizontal bar, which he still managed to achieve in spite of his fall during qualifications due to some help provided by his competitors' mistakes, event finals, and silver in parallel bars event final.

It was also in Melbourne where Shirai successfully debuted his third original skill on vault, sixth overall, Shirai III, which is a third Yurchenko-style vault to now bear his name. Technically, the skill is a round-off back-handspring with a full twist entry (Scherbo) on and a double twist off the vaulting platform, and has a D-score of 5.4 under the 2017-2020 Code of Points.

Eponymous skills

Shirai has six eponymous skills in gymnastics, the most of all active gymnasts. Eponymous skills in gymnastics are automatically awarded to gymnasts who had successfully completed these skills in a sanctioned international competition, namely the Olympic Games or World Championships. However, such skills can also be awarded through a separate process of directly petitioning the FIG if they were successfully completed (with evidence) in other selected non-sanctioned International competitions.

A summary below is shown with difficulty scores under FIG's 2017-2020 Code of Points.

• * Both Shirai-Kim and Shirai-Nguyen are skills officially made up of the two names, Shirai and another (different) gymnast, because Shirai had originated each skill at the same time as someone else during the same competition, the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp. However, as things naturally evolved, both these skills have gradually come to be more commonly known as just Shirai. This has much to do with Shirai's popularity as well as his continual presence in gymnastics' international competition circuit since 2013 while the other two gymnasts have both been hardly heard from again since then, except when having to officially reference these skills. Order of names reflects chronological order of gymnasts successfully performing an original skill in the same competition (e.g. officially Shirai-Kim, but not Kim-Shirai as it is sometimes inaccurately called). Full eponymous skill names are bolded and italicised (e.g. Shirai) while partial ones are only italicised (e.g. Scherbo).

• ** For detailed descriptions of these skills, please refer to "Career" section above. Abbreviated descriptions reflect terms more commonly used and understood in practice when their officially awarded eponymous names are not used for whatever reason to reference these skills.

• ***/**** Inclusion of back(***) and/or layout(****) when referring to these specific skills are in practice optional unless it is in the interest of extreme or guaranteed accuracy, and/or for official purposes. When unspecified, these skills are usually understood to be travelling in the backward direction and layout or stretched position. On the other hand, if they are not travelling backwards and/or not in layout position (e.g. travelling "forwards" and/or in "tucked" position), then every detail must be specified in the description to ensure accuracy in their identification.

• ***** A Yurchenko or Scherbo vault is identified like any other by its "entry method" (i.e. before hands touch the vaulting platform). Yurchenko vaults, in particular, have been classed as a specific family of vaults, namely all vaults with the common "entry method" of beginning with a round-off back-handspring; therefore, Scherbo vaults are also by definition Yurchenko vaults, albeit more complex versions of them. Thus, unless specified, all Yurchenko vaults listed above begin simply with a round-off back-handspring (backwards) entry onto the vaulting platform. The difference between a basic Yurchenko and Scherbo vault is that there is an additional element of a full twist integrated into the back-handspring of a Scherbo, and it happens in the time after the feet leave the springboard and before the hands arrive onto the vaulting platform. Yurchenko and Scherbo vaults were named after their originators, Natalia Yurchenko of the former Soviet Union and Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus.

References

External links

• Profile
• Shirai(FloorEx)
• Shirai/Kim(Vault)

Olympic champions in artistic gymnastics - men's team all-around
1904:  United States (USA) 1908:  Sweden (SWE) 1912:  Italy (ITA) 1920:  Italy (ITA) 1924:  Italy (ITA) 1928:  Switzerland (SUI) 1932:  Italy (ITA) 1936:  Germany (GER) 1948:  Finland (FIN) 1952:  Soviet Union (URS) 1956:  Soviet Union (URS) 1960:  Japan (JPN) 1964:  Japan (JPN) 1968:  Japan (JPN) 1972:  Japan (JPN) 1976:  Japan (JPN) 1980:  Soviet Union (URS) 1984:  United States (USA) 1988:  Soviet Union (URS) 1992:  Unified Team (EUN) 1996:  Russia (RUS) 2000:  China (CHN) 2004:  Japan (JPN) 2008:  China (CHN) 2012:  China (CHN) 2016:  Japan (JPN)
2016  Japan (JPN): Ryōhei Katō · Kenzō Shirai · Yusuke Tanaka · Koji Yamamuro · Kōhei Uchimura