Long live the King: Uchimura Kohei says sayonara to career - but not gymnastics

The King will always be King.

There were no tears or an outpouring of emotion from Uchimura Kohei on Friday (14 January) as he explained why he is retiring.

it was just the usual pensive words and witty sense of humour that the greatest male gymnast ever has shown throughout a career marked by three Olympic gold medals and an unassailable six consecutive world all-around titles.

Once Uchimura couldn't train like the world's best, he knew he couldn't compete like the best, and it was time to move on.

“I couldn’t train at the highest level anymore”, the Japanese legend said in front of 150 reporters during a press conference streamed and televised live nationwide. He had announced his retirement on Tuesday.

“I’ve always taken pride in working harder than anyone in the world, holding the toughest practices. It was more about motivation, the mental side than the physical pain.

“I used to be able to grind it out. But once I couldn’t push myself to the level I had been, I knew it was time.

"This might be the end - but it's also the beginning".

Uchimura: Doing it my way

The world will have one final opportunity to appreciate the 33-year-old four-time Olympian, on 12 March in an exhibition he will organise at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.

There, Uchimura will perform on all six apparatus and not just the horizontal bar, which he was forced to focus on for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games after his body could no longer withstand the pounding.

Uchimura said it was in 2021 that he made the decision to retire, before the world championships in October, held in his birthplace of Kitakyushu.

He finished sixth in the last competition of a career that began when he was three years old - three months after failing to qualify for the horizontal bar final at Tokyo.

“I’ve always been an all-arounder so I want to go out as one”, said the two-time all-around Olympic champion in 2012 and 2016, who also captured 10 straight All Japan titles in the all-around until 2017.

“I don’t really want to quit. If I could keep going I would. But leading up to the worlds, I felt like it was going to be too difficult from hereon.

“If I were to keep competing I wasn’t thinking about prolonging for just one year; I would go for the next Olympics.

“That’s another three years down the road and I didn’t think I could pull it off. After the Olympics it was hard enough to get to the worlds. Three more years did not seem doable”.

Remember the time

Uchimura looked back on his career, spannin three decades in the sport, in which he said he "could have done more". This, from a man who won seven Olympic medals and 21 medals at the world championships.

To Uchimura - who said the Li Xiaopeng is the most difficult skill he has ever tried - there are two performances that stand out to him by a country mile:

The first is the all-around final at the 2011 worlds in Tokyo. The second is the Rio 2016 all-around final.

“I can still feel it, relive it inside me. In 2011, I was in a zone like I’ve never been in before. It’s like that feeling when you get up in the morning and know everything about the day is going to go right - and it did.

“That horizontal bar in Rio, I like to think it was one of the closest contests in Olympic history. Oleg (Vernyayev) and I owned the arena that day. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t think I’ll ever have that feeling again”.

So what’s next for Uchimura?

If you thought a cruise around the world or bungee jumping or a media gig, think again.

It’s gymnastics, gymnastics, and more gymnastics, and he wants to pass that on to future generations. Yet while he wants his successors to be great at their sport, he wants them to be even better as people - as his father used to tell him, over and over.

"I really don't want to do anything else. All I know is gymnastics. Uchimura Kohei is made of gymnastics", he said.

"For that I’m grateful and I want to give back to the sport. I feel like I still have a lot to learn about gymnastics. I want to more than perfect it - take it to a whole another level.

“What I want to tell future gymnasts is you can’t just be a good gymnast; you have to be as good of a person.

“My dad always told me that I had to be an even better person than I am a gymnast and I know what he means now.

“You look at Ohtani Shohei, Hanyu Yuzuru. They have the backing of the nation because of the people that they are. That is my definition of a true athlete”.