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Posted 2.10.2022 in News

Men ready to seize the stage at Liverpool 2022

Gymnastics never stands still and fresh faces are leading the new men’s world order into the 2022 World Championships in Liverpool.

There’s a new code of points, only two years until the next Olympics and no Kōhei Uchimura so we can safely say the sands have shifted on this side of the sport.

Here are 2022’s outstanding performers so far and the feats that make them impossible to ignore heading to the north-west of England.

 

Zhang Boheng

All allowances made for judging variations, the reigning all-around world champion sits atop the world list of best all-around scores.

He posted a superb 88.000 in qualifying and went on to claim a landmark maiden national title at this month’s Chinese Championships in Hangzhou.

The 22-year-old went on a redemption mission after narrowly missing out on a first Olympics and won the 2021 world all-around title with a brilliant 87.981 by 0.017 from Hashimoto.

Their head-to-head in Liverpool will be a defining one and Zhang is clearly bang up for the fight.

He said: “Actually going against Hashimoto was kind of an amazing victory. Learning how to adjust your mentality when the scores are so close, how to cleanly finish your routine when you have made a mistake, how to continue doing high-quality routines afterward, these all come with experience.”

Daiki Hashimoto

Crowned the youngest ever men’s all-around Olympic champion aged 19, Hashimoto is the heir apparent to Uchimura, who retired in January.

He was flawless for all-around and horizontal bar gold in Tokyo and then took two silvers in those disciplines at October’s Worlds in Kitakyushu.

The Narita native is far from infallible. He fell on pommel and bar at the NHK Trophy and then again at the All-Japan Championships - the world won’t have missed those.

It seems the laser focus is on leading Japan to a first team gold since Glasgow 2015, with Hashimoto saying:

“We’ve missed out on the team gold the last few years. “We need to come together and perform well as a team. That is the goal.”

Carlos Yulo

There is much more to come from the first male athlete from Southeast Asia to win a gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships.

Filipino Yulo made history with floor gold at Stuttgart 2019 and showed his versatility to finish on top of the world in vault and take a parallel bars silver two years later.

There was disappointment at the Tokyo Games but the 22-year-old is a big stage performer and his 15.200 floor routine at the Southeast Asian Games is the clear world lead.

He will wrestle for floor gold in Liverpool with Israel’s Olympic champion Artem Dolgopyat, who holds the second-highest score in the world this year with 14.966 en route to European gold.

Brody Malone

Malone’s best all-around score of the year is a full point behind Hashimoto’s and Zhang’s.

But the Tennessee titan registered 86.750 to retain his US all-around title and rubber-stamp his status as the leader on the men’s side in Stars and Stripes.

There was even room for a rare mistake on the horizontal bar, where he won world bronze last year, showing scope for improvement in Liverpool.

Joe Fraser

Ranked in the world top ten for all-around, pommel horse and parallel bars, Joe Fraser has already had an outstanding 2022.

His score of 85.565 to win European gold stands as an excellent mark under non-domestic judging and was one of three titles he won in Munich.

With three Commonwealth golds under his belt in Birmingham, Fraser has already shown his penchant for performing in front of home crowds.

He will be a key factor in Britain’s fight for team bronze, clinging onto the coattails of the Chinese and Japanese, and apparatus honours.