U.S. gymnast Danell Leyva felt for Oleg Verniaiev after the Ukrainian finished a controversial second in the Rio Olympic all-around, .099 behind Japan’s Kohei Uchimura.
“What they did in the all-around was super unfair,” Leyva said on the Gymcastic podcast (10-minute mark). “I sincerely just feel like Oleg outperformed Uchimura in a couple of different events, in most events. We all know how political gymnastics is. I guess they were probably just like, yeah, we’ve got to give it to Uchi because it’s Uchi.”
Uchimura became the first gymnast to repeat as Olympic all-around champion in 44 years, adding to his collection that includes the last six world all-around titles.
Uchimura went into the sixth and final Olympic all-around rotation trailing Verniaiev by .901. They both went on high bar, one of Uchimura’s best events. Uchimura outscored Verniaiev by a full point to take the come-from-behind title.
Leyva did not do the all-around in Rio after taking bronze behind Uchimura in London. He criticized high bar scoring at the Rio Games, saying others did amazing routines and received low scores. But he was OK with it, because everybody was getting judged the same way (strictly).
Until Uchimura.
The Japanese fell on high bar in qualifying and scored a 14.3, among the bottom half of scores for the 24 men who made the all-around final. In the team final, Uchimura scored 15.166. In the all-around final, he scored 15.8, the best high bar score of the Games across qualifying and finals.
German Fabian Hambuechen won the high bar event final with a 15.766, while Leyva took silver with a 15.5.
“It’s like he’s in a different competition,” Leyva, who also took Rio parallel bars silver behind Verniaiev, said of Uchimura’s high bar scores. “Everybody is getting judged incredibly strict like that, OK, whatever. Then Uchi went, and his routine wasn’t that great, like it wasn’t perfect at all, and they gave him a near-perfect score. And it’s just like but no, because the other people.”
Verniaiev did not dispute the all-around results in the press conference after the event and was effusive of Uchimura, calling him a legend.
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