Japan Defends Men's Team Title at World Gymnastics Championships

Rotterdam, Netherlands, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan won its second straight men's team all-around title at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Tuesday, clinching its eighth title overall.

The team scored a total of 251.928 points across the six apparatuses, 1.599 points ahead of second-place Russia, while China placed third.

The top three teams qualified for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The five Japanese gymnasts--Daiki Hashimoto, 25, Shinnosuke Oka, 22, Shohei Kawakami, 23, Ryosuke Doi, 24, and Fusuke Maeda, 26--ranked first in the qualifying round.

In the final, they performed steadily through the fourth apparatus, the vault. Although their score on the fifth apparatus, the parallel bars, was lower than expected, Hashimoto scored a strong 14.866 points on the horizontal bar, the final event.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]