Kenzō Shirai

Kenzō Shirai
is a Japanese men's former athlete of artistic gymnastics (AG). Born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, he, a graduate of Kishine High School, joined the Nippon Sport Science University (Nittaidai). Shirai took the team gold, and a bronze on individual vault with the Japanese men's AG (MAG) national team at the 2016 Summer Olympics (OG) in Rio de Janeiro while more major wins were from the World Championships (WC).
Early life
Like his older brothers, Shirai started gymnastics with parents Masaki and Norimi, first coaches and home club owners. Shirai said, "For as long as I can remember, I was a gym rat." Instead of paying day care, parents took him to their work. Practicing a six-hour session 5–7 days per week, Shirai attended regular school, which was atypical for an elite athlete. After high school in March 2015, he was accepted to attend/represent new home club of Nittaidai on the southern Tokyo border where other Japanese gymnasts of men and women's AG (WAG) also trained, including mentor Kōhei Uchimura.
Career
Six eponyms, three each on floor exercise (FX) and vault (VT), were named after Shirai as he was the first to perform all successfully at a federation-approved international. He was the face of Japanese MAG national team in 2013–2018 until injury thus halted/ended career. Shirai retired on June 16, 2021, after not making the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
2013
Barely 17, Shirai was youngest man participating at the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp. On FX, he qualified on top with a 16.233, 0.633 over next male, Brazil's Diego Hypólito, and became youngest ever men’s WC FX winner there. "Historic" 22¼ twists with 7.4 difficulty score (D-score) secured the first major at only 17 years, 1 month and 11 days old. Shirai's 16.000 final total got 0.4 win-margin over American runner-up Jacob Dalton. Sport analyst Tim Daggett declared live on-air that "there is no way Shirai doesn't win this" just before Shirai began his final FX routine where he "twisted his way to first gold medal". On VT, Shirai was again ranked on top in qualifying, but only managed to place fourth in finals.
Three out of all eponymous skills for MAG were also officially verified after in Belgium. Shirai successfully completed the 1) Shirai-Kim or Shirai on VT (Yurchenko—all VTing skills with round off [RO]–back handspring [BH] entries, originated by Soviet Natalia Yurchenko at Moscow's 1982 meet—a "triple-twisting Yurchenko"/"TTY" or triple [3/1] twist), 2) Shirai-Nguyen or Shirai on FX ([backward] quadruple [4/1]-twisting layout), and 3) Shirai 2 on FX (forward [layout] triple twist).
2014
Shirai secured Japan team silver at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning—only 0.1 trailing winner and host China. He made individual FX and VT finals again. On FX, despite having much larger D-score, he struggled with the execution score (E-score). In his third pass, an out-of-bound step resulted in a 0.1 penalty that cost him the gold, just 0.017 behind Russia's Denis Ablyazin. On VT, Shirai had top E-scores, but lower D-score on second VT dragged him down to fourth.
2015
At the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow with Japan's national MAG team, Shirai took all-around (AA) gold in team finals for first time since 1978. Shirai posted men’s top FX score of the whole meet, and it was also the only value above 16.000 points. In the individual event finals, Shirai qualified for both FX and VT, winning former and ranking 7th on latter. Posting a 16.233, the 7.6-difficulty FX routine started with at least 0.8 above the rest. Such high scores were due to high connection bonuses of various skills and combinations that ended passes facing forwards with blind landings, risking his combination lines. He also began competing "double (2/1)-somersault" (2 revolutions) skills on FX with high consistency.
Over Toyota Cup in December, Shirai verified his 4th eponym for MAG—the Shirai 3 on FX, or (a) "triple-double" layout. The extremely high difficulty skill let him become one of the men's gymnasts, who originated one of just four eponymous skills with then top MAG D-score of H (0.8) until their next new, top I (0.9) was created to help score future hardest skills.
2016
2016 Summer Olympics
At 19 years, 11 months and 15 days old, Shirai became Japan's youngest and only teen male gymnast in history to ever win Olympic gold after Japanese men's squad took the title in the team AA (TAA) finals. Both of Shirai's contributions for team total on VT and FX with 15.633 and 16.133 respectively were top values of his two apparatuses at the entire event.
In the VT finals, Shirai successfully originated the only new and also top-scoring skill at the end of the whole competition to post a 15.833 in 1st attempt. The result of having to use a much easier 2nd VT with low-difficulty 5.6 reduced the total enough to tie Marian Drăgulescu of Romania as 3rd highest. Shirai ranked ahead for bronze in tiebreak with top E-score among his VTs. Here too, he verified his 2nd VT, or 5th eponym, for MAG—the Shirai 2 on VT, or Yurchenko 3½ (3.5Y).
In the FX finals, the twice and reigning world FX champ was an overwhelming favourite with extremely high D-score and great E-scores, but got landing issues in ½, 3 of 6, his passes then. In interviews, Shirai and American Sam Mikulak, top qualifier to end up 8th, expressed disappointment with audiences' sportsmanship whose boos/jeers grew loud/hostile for non-Brazilian sets as time passed. Briton Max Whitlock, the unexpected winner, had earlier draw, avoiding crowd input.
2017
At February's Melbourne World Cup, Shirai as Team Japan's men took individual FX, VT and the horizontal bar/high bar (HB) titles, parallel bars (PB) silver, and 10th on still rings (SR); he also verified his 6th MAG eponym then—the Shirai 3 on VT, or (a) "full (1/1) on–double full off"—via governing body of all AG, International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), into Code of Points (CoP) as official owner of most MAG eponyms, behind now only to Nellie Kim of Russia's controversial 7.
At the 2017 World Championships in Montreal, Shirai made the individual AA (IAA), FX and VT finals, medalling in each. In the IAA, he took bronze with an 86.431, just 0.017 behind silver-winning Lin Chaopan. In FX, Shirai defended his gold with 1.100 above 2nd-ranked Artem Dolgopyat. In VT, Shirai won title with tiniest margin above runner-up Igor Radivilov. Injuring hamstring, favourite Yang Hak Seon left. MAG 1st used new, top I (0.9) D-score here for the Miyachi on HB too.
2018
In March 2018, Shirai competed at the American Cup in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. In spite of being the competition's favourite, he only placed sixth due to a few errors and falls on HB and pommel horse (PH) while also underperforming the infamous-difficult FX routine. Shirai recovered by winning the Tokyo World Cup after a month.
In a series of domestic competitions being held locally between April and August, Shirai won IAA silver medals at the All-Japan Championships and NHK Trophy, and took the All-Japan Student Championships. Shirai was also able to win an individual gold medal on FX with silver medal on VT at the All-Japan Event Championships.
At the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Japan did take bronze in the TAA finals, but senior athletes, such as Kōhei Uchimura and Yusuke Tanaka, acknowledged team got slowed by injury. Shirai was off his form, simplified various skills on each apparatus—most noticeable on FX—resulted in lower D-scores, and was unable to defend any of his 2017 medals, but despite his 2018 results on individual events, he was still able to take silver on FX and bronze on VT, and rank seventh on the AA.
2019
On April 7, 2019, Shirai joined competitive circuit this year at the FIG Individual All-Around World Cup 2019, or 2019 Tokyo World Cup in Tokyo, Japan. Like 2018, he was supposed to start his season off at the 2019 American Cup, but withdrew to treat left ankle injury, which was sustained about a week before he began travelling. Due to the injury, Shirai simplified certain skills in his routines for the competition here in Tokyo, which became especially noticeable when he performed on floor—his strongest signature event—recycling past skills/combos. Changes included starting his current floor routine to old opening pass RO–BH–3½ twist–punch double twist. Instead of the Shirai 3 opening pass, one of two hardest skills then for men's floor, he also only did a triple full as the final pass, not the Shirai, his famous quad twist. Shirai ultimately failed to defend his gold medal from 2018, but he did manage to capture bronze with the combined total of 82.964, despite still recovering from injury. The 2018 bronze medallist, Sam Mikulak of the United States (86.599), improved on standings, and won gold. Japan's Wataru Tanigawa (85.665) defended his silver. US analyst for NBC Tim Daggett said, "(M)an, myth, legend ... capable of doing ... many things ... people thought were ... literally impossible before Shirai did them."
On April 26–28, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 All-Japan AA Championships, one of two closely-hosted-IAA-only meets in Chofu, Tokyo metro, Japan, and made the event finals in 22nd place, but ended up in 30th. Shirai also only managed one top 3 score for any apparatus, and second highest for floor (14.533) behind Kazuki Minami (14.633), who just competed on floor. This event's respective gold, silver and bronze medallists—Kakeru Tanigawa with a combined score of 84.699, Kazuma Kaya with a combined score of 84.664, and Kazuyuki Takeda with a combined score of 84.498—had Tanigawa managing the second highest score for pommel horse while Takeda had achieved the third highest for still rings too. After assessing their winning scores, it shows there is much to be desired in being able to post numbers that are above average for every apparatus. Shirai's remaining scores in that final—12.900 on pommel horse, 12.800 on still rings, 14.166 on vault, 13.733 on parallel bars, 11.300 on the horizontal bar, and 79.432 for his total AA combined score. Injury had persisted to adversely affect his recent competition performances, and thus reflected in the results. Event number differences between top apparatus scores and Shirai's were particularly wide on pommel horse, still rings and the horizontal bar.
On May 18–19, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 NHK Trophy in Chofu, Tokyo metro, Japan, repeating his 2018 participation in the IAA-only event. Due to lingering injury issues with the left ankle, he was unable to perform as well at the competition when compared to most others that would also include his performance there last year. Shirai placed 23rd with a 243.794 combined score. He was unable to achieve a top three score on any of the apparatuses, not even on his signatures of floor or vault. Shirai's scores on each respective apparatus were 14.500 on floor, 12.533 on pommel horse, 12.800 on still rings, 14.566 on vault, 14.066 on parallel bars, and 13.066 on high bar. Kakeru Tanigawa (254.363), Wataru Tanigawa (254.128) and Kazuma Kaya (254.126), who won the gold, silver and bronze, did not manage to score too, if at all, more than only one of the top three numbers on any apparatus, which may also indicate that none of the 2019 gymnasts was able to do particularly well that year at the competition. Kakeru Tanigawa was only able to score the second highest number (14.733) on floor, Wataru Tanigawa was also only able to score the third highest (14.866) on vault, and similar to Shirai, Kazuma Kaya likewise did not manage to post a top three number on any of his apparatuses at that event too.
On June 21–23, 2019, Shirai competed at the 2019 All-Japan Apparatus Championships in Takasaki, Japan, hoping he would do well enough to secure a spot on the Japanese men's national team and compete as part of the next world championships held in the autumn of 2019. It was ultimately not meant to be his season though. Shirai qualified for three individual event finals, which were floor exercise, vault and the horizontal bar, ranking second, fourth and sixth respectively. In such finals, he proceeded to finish in third (14.900), fifth (14.433) and eighth (11.200) place respectively for each of these apparatuses too. Ranking ahead of Shirai on floor exercise were Kazuki Minami with a total score of 15.033, and Naoto Hayasaka with a total value of 15.000. Their top finisher on vault was Keitaro Okubo, posting the average combined score of 15.233, and the winner on the horizontal bar was Hirohito Kohama with number totalling 14.766. Shirai's floor difficulty values had remained on top among all the finalists. Shirai, however, needed additional work in the execution, which could have been cleaner, and would reflect in the routine's E-score after. Also, vault D-score values were comparatively lesser—only one of their lowest at 5.2—and needed higher base scores before he could seriously challenge the top vaulters.
In 2019, for the first time since Shirai's debut competition in 2013, he did not make the Japanese men's national AG team, and hence, he was excluded to compete at the 2019 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on October 4–13, 2019. Shirai's 2019 performances at competition were noticeably slowed down by a stubborn injury of this nagging left ankle, which resulted in his inability to compete optimally during the 2019 All-Japan Apparatus Championships when the results then, and at the 2019 NHK Trophy, decided all athletes, who would join Japan's national team at the next Worlds. His best chance was to get one of two spots available to individual Japanese men, namely for one or both of Shirai's signature events, FX and/or VT, but he just managed 3rd and 5th places on individual FX and VT, which made him not qualify for the WC, and thus unable to defend the 2018 world medals. As Shirai was not the only high-profile absentee since Kōhei Uchimura was also missing due to injuries, Japanese men had sent a fairly inexperienced team to these Worlds where the men's competition was dominated by other nations. Shirai worked hard to return to competition form after an extended period of time to try and recover from various injuries. Hence, he was very rusty on all apparatuses.
On December 14–15, 2019, Shirai again competed at the local 2019 Toyota International Cup (or Gymnastics Competition) in Aichi, Japan, from a last four years' win streak, in which Shirai had won each individual floor event before then (2015–2018), and the individual vault event in three past successive seasons (2015–2017) too. He did not compete vault in 2019 due to what ended up being the start of some rather stubborn ankle injuries to truly begin affecting performance level of competition. Injuries extending into 2019, Shirai still qualified first on floor and second on vault for the respective finals, but did not compete, withdrawing from all events at the end.
2020/2021
Injuries and retirement
On December 10–13, 2020, then postgraduate at Nittaidai, Shirai competed again at the 2020 All-Japan Championships in Takasaki (2 years), and not well as in past years, placing individually only 18th on AA (167.196), and 4th on FX (15.166). Japan's national AG federation repurposed it into the extra local event in OG qualifying. This helped coaches finalise most in-form roster closest to start of COVID-delayed 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo that got postponed to next summer with a 6-man squad—4 for TAA with team bronze win at the 2018 World Championships as Shirai contributed on FX, VT and HB to team's total, plus 2 more for individual events.
Due to public health issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were delayed by one year until July 23–August 8, 2021. Our epidemic made many qualifiers to OG put off/cancel their events too. In 2020, Shirai reluctantly began to consider retirement because of persistent injuries, but returned early 2021 to compete at the 2021 All-Japan Championships, still trying to make it to the local OG. After not qualifying, he announced the immediate retirement from AG on June 16, 2021, also missing him the 2021 World Championships in home replacement city Kitakyushu. Shirai left behind legacy of 13 major medals, and 6 eponyms.
Competitive history
Eponymous skills
Shirai got official credit in 6 original skill names. Current 2022–2024 quad's D-scores below held up since competing last in the FIG's earlier 2017–2021 CoP for MAG:
Japan's Takahiro Goshima had progressed the front layout 3 to 3½ twist, or Shirai 2 to Goshima, on floor with G (0.7) D-score at the 2017 Stuttgart Team Challenge. While the Shirai on vault got success competing since 2015 by other athletes like Briton Max Whitlock and China's Zhang Chenglong, Shirai always topped E-scores. Succeeding Kazuhito Tanaka on Japanese men's 2012 Olympic team in 2016, still only Shirai was ever successful competing 4 of the 6 eponyms through 2021 quad. Shirai originated the Shirai 2 on vault at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, one skill nobody through 2017–2021 quad managed since to compete it again.
Miscellaneous
In October 2017, as the 2017 World Championships just finished up in Montreal, a social media video showed Shirai in highly competent delivery of the Mustafina on floor, or triple Y-turn, which has an E (0.5) D-score in the 2017–2021 CoP for WAG—officially named earlier after Russian gymnast Aliya Mustafina. Shirai was then also observed completing additional skills on even more WAG apparatuses, such as the execution of a partial routine on uneven bars, at least to comparable levels. In December 2018, another clip was posted and compared of Shirai very skilfully reproducing compatriot Mai Murakami's entire competition floor routine to music with her hardest skills—many not assessed for scoring of MAG—such as the Gomez on floor, or quadruple turn with free leg below horizontal (originated by Spain's Elena Gómez at the 2002 World Championships in Debrecen), which was another skill given FIG's top D-score of E (0.5) for all WAG dance elements in 2017–2021 quad. With Shirai's knowledge, there had been another compilation video then shared by the fans showing Shirai training some skills/combos that had potential to be part of future arsenal to perform possible advanced original floor and vault skills—could include "RO–BH–4½ twist punch ½ or full" on floor, and "½ on–3½ off" on vault too.
See also
Japan men's national gymnastics team
References
External links
Shirai (FloorEx) at gymnaflash.com
Shirai/Kim (Vault) at gymnaflash.com
1996 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Yokohama
Medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
Japanese male artistic gymnasts
Olympic gymnasts for Japan
Gymnasts at the 2016 Summer Olympics
Olympic gold medalists for Japan
Olympic bronze medalists for Japan
Olympic medalists in gymnastics
Medalists at the 2016 Summer Olympics
Originators of elements in artistic gymnastics
Nippon Sport Science University alumni
21st-century Japanese people