Kenzō Shirai

2013 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium

In October 2013, at just 17 years old, Shirai competed at the 2013 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships^[7] in Antwerp, Belgium, for the first time at a World Championships, one of the two main FIG-sanctioned events, where he and Kim Hee Hoon of South Korea had successfully originated a skill—now officially named the Shirai or Shirai-Kim, or triple-twisting Yurchenko (TTY), on vault—to automatically qualify it to take both their names. At the same meet, Shirai and Tuan Dat Nguyen of Vietnam also accomplished a similar feat for the skill now named the Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen, or quadruple twist, on floor. Officially, each of these skills is to bear the names of two gymnasts, but both elements have evolved over time and been unofficially shortened by many to simply the Shirai, thanks to Shirai's more consistent presence and continuous participation in gymnastics' senior international competition circuit, athletic abilities, approachability, and, most of all, popularity.

In Antwerp, Shirai had successfully completed yet one more original skill on his own to officially bear his name–the Shirai 2 on floor, or a front layout with triple twist. Difficulty score assignments to the Shirai or Shirai-Kim on vault, Shirai or Shirai-Nguyen on floor, and Shirai 2 on floor were 6.0, F (0.6) and F (0.6) respectively, in the previous 2013–2016 Code of Points. Difficulty on his floor skills has held up but vault has since been lowered to 5.6 in the most recent 2017-2020 Code of Points.

Shirai had managed to qualify the first time for the individual floor and vault event finals. In the vault event final, Shirai had just missed medalling and finished in fourth place with an average combined score of 15.133. The two vaults that he competed were the Shirai and Driggs (Kasamatsu straight with 2½ twists), which had difficulty scores of 6.0 and 5.6 in the earlier 2013–2016 Code of Points valid then but would have their D-scores reduced to just 5.6 and 5.2 respectively in this quad.

In the floor event final, Shirai won his first world title with a "historic" routine that consisted of 22¼ twists and had a difficulty score of 7.4, the highest among all finalists. Shirai's victory margin of 0.4 over the silver medalist, Jacob Dalton of the United States, was the largest between any two athletes. His passes were 1) RO–BH–3½ twist–punch double twist, 2) front full twist–punch Shirai 2, 3) RO–whip back–punch triple twist, 4) RO–BH–2½ twist–punch 2½ twist, 5) RO–full-twisting side somersault, and 6) RO–BH–Shirai. Due to Shirai's demonstrated ability in the consistently clean execution of his extremely difficult routine relative to other gymnasts during qualifying, it had given enough confidence to a former American gymnast and television sports commentator for gymnastics to unusually dare declare on air that "there is no way Shirai doesn't win this" immediately before Shirai started performing his final floor routine, in which Shirai easily twisted his way to a gold medal.

2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Nanning, China

In October 2014, Shirai competed at the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Nanning, China. After qualifying in first place with the same difficulty score of 7.4, Shirai won the silver medal in the floor event final with a combined score of 15.733. Shirai is said to be working on his execution score after a technical error, stepping out-of-bounds in his third pass, which resulted in him a 0.1 penalty point deduction from his combined score and was enough to lose him the gold medal, finishing second and 0.017 point behind a surprised eventual winner, Denis Ablyazin of Russia, who also won the bronze medal on floor at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Despite expectations of him defending his world floor title, it was noted that Shirai's routine even with its difficulty score number much higher in comparison consisted of compositions using only "single somersault" (one revolution) skills until then, which was uncommon and limiting, made harder entirely by performing them before and/or after in combination with a variety of different twisting and bounding elements. Adding to the anticipation of what we could expect from him in the not-so-distant future, British commentary reported that Shirai was working on his ability to compete a quintuple-twisting (back layout) somersault soon.^[8]

In the vault event final, Shirai finished again in fourth place with an average combined score of 15.062 despite having one of the two highest execution scores (9.466) in the final, but he unfortunately had a comparatively weak second vault with a difficulty value of only 5.6, which was the only vault valuing below 6.0 and significantly lower than all the other vaults performed in that final, to have any chance of seriously contending with his rivals. In contrast, the eventual gold medalist had a 6.4 difficulty score for both his vaults, which resulted in a point deficit of 0.8 on Shirai's second vault alone right from the beginning, even before the start of the event final.

2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland

On October 31, 2015, Shirai won his second world floor title at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. In the floor event final, he successfully delivered another extremely difficult routine and scored 16.233 points, ahead Britain's Max Whitlock and Spain's Rayderley Zapata. His wide victory margin in that final of 0.667 was the largest among all male event finals across the World Championships, outdoing even the gold-medal-winning performance margin he achieved in the 2013 floor event final, and his updated routine's even bigger start value of 7.6 in difficulty was again the highest among all competitors. Shirai's floor routines until then had only consisted of "single somersault" (one revolution) elements, but it is this competition in 2015 that he began showing off his abilities to successfully perform "double somersault" (two revolutions) elements with the Ri Jong Song on floor or a triple-twisting double (tucked) back somersault, which has a difficulty score of G (0.7), as his second pass in his floor routines. On floor, Shirai had changed his existing second pass of front full twist punch Shirai 2 to become his third pass, and eliminated the original one of RO–whip back–punch triple twist altogether. The order of his passes became 1) RO–BH–3½ twist–punch double twist, 2) RO–BH–Ri Jong Song, 3) front full twist–punch Shirai 2, 4) RO–BH–2½ twist–punch 2½ twist, 5) RO–full-twisting side somersault, and 6) RO–BH–Shirai.

In the vault final, Shirai finished in seventh place with an average combined score of 14.516. Although Shirai's execution scores were competitive among the finalists, both his vaults with difficulty score values of 5.6 and 5.2 this year lacked the necessary higher difficulty numbers in totalling an average combined score that could realistically challenge the world's top vaulters for a spot on the podium when every other vault performed in that event final had difficulty score values of 6.0 or above.

2015 Toyota International Gymnastics Competition in Toyota City, Japan

On December 12–13, 2015, Shirai competed locally on home soil at the 2015 Toyota International Gymnastics Competition in Toyota City, Japan, a smaller but fairly known, even though non-FIG-sanctioned, international competition with a good variety of participants on its roster and of some importance because Shirai had successfully completed his third original skill, one of the currently two most difficult skills on floor in MAG. Via petition, the skill has since taken Shirai's name and now been called the Shirai 3 on floor. In practice, it is a triple-twisting double (back) layout or the Ri Jong Song in layout on floor, his second "double somersault" (two revolutions) skill incorporated into his floor routines since then after he swapped his Shirai 3 into start position as his first pass with the Ri Jong Song remaining as his second pass performed immediately after; the rest of his floor routine has also been accordingly modified to accommodate the increased difficulty of this change. In this individual apparatus competition, Shirai also won gold medals in the floor and vault event finals with total combined scores of 15.700 and 15.225 respectively.

Due to the current most-difficult nature of the Shirai 3 on floor, Shirai achieved the very rare honour of sharing with Andreas Bretschneider of Germany, Valeri Liukin of the former Soviet Union, and Donnell Whittenburg of the United States to own one of, until very recently, only four longstanding most difficult and highest scoring competition-verified original skills in all of men's gymnastics to receive the previous top official difficulty score assignment of H (0.8) from the FIG. Bretschneider, Liukin and Whittenburg had originated the Bretschneider (double-twisting [tucked] Kovac) on the horizontal bar, the Liukin (triple back [tucked] somersault) on floor, and the Whittenburg (triple [back] piked somersault dismount) on rings respectively. Bretschneider was once widely expected to advance the Bretschneider on the horizontal bar himself to layout in competition, and the skill was scored ahead of time by the FIG and unofficially coined the Bretschneider 2 on the horizontal bar to better facilitate him as they awaited for the skill to be successfully completed in competition, but he had been unable to further compete it in a suitable setting since the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro due to injuries. Taking advantage of that in June 2017, Hidetaka Miyachi of Japan then beat Bretschneider to the punch and completed the first double-twisting layout Kovac or now the Miyachi on the horizontal bar, which was assigned the single highest previously structured but still-to-be-activated difficulty level of I (0.9), successfully on home soil at the 2017 Japan National Gymnastics Apparatus Championships in Takasaki, Japan, before petitioning for the FIG's recognition of the skill to officially bear his name. I (0.9) is the brand new top difficulty score level and was initially created for the primary purpose of specifically helping MAG's existing system to efficiently handle the horizontal bar's scoring of the Miyachi due to its high difficulty. Coincidentally, this has enabled the levels of the men's scoring system to now mirror the women's, which also just has one skill at the top—theMoors (double-twisting double layout) on floor.

2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, team Japan had qualified first into the team all-around event final, following their success at the 2015 World Championships. On August 8, 2016, at the Rio Olympic Arena, team Japan solidified their victory with a final score of 274.094. Shirai contributed to their first-place finish in the team final with scores of 16.133 on floor and 15.633 on vault. He did not compete on any other apparatus in this Olympics but did managed to qualify and compete in the floor and vault event finals. Going into the floor event final as a two-time and current world champion on floor, Shirai was by far the overwhelming favourite to win the gold medal but only managed a disappointing fourth-place finish, scoring 15.333 after having trouble with landings on three out of his six tumbling passes. In the vault final the next day, Shirai scored an average combined score of 15.449 (15.833 and 15.066 for his two vaults respectively with the former being the highest-scoring vault of the final) and tied the legendary Marian Drăgulescu of Romania for the third highest overall score in that event final. The tiebreaker had worked in Shirai's favour this time to win him the bronze medal, edging out Drăgulescu—who happened to score an identical average combined total but missed achieving the all-important determining number for breaking a tie in the form of the single highest execution score value from any of his vaults performed—of a medal.

In Rio, Shirai also successfully originated a second vault, now officially named the Shirai 2 (3½-twisting Yurchenko), which was assigned the second highest difficulty score of 6.4 in the earlier 2013–2016 Code of Points valid at the time with highest of 7.0 unofficially assigned in advance to vault specialist Igor Radivilov of Ukraine, 2012 Olympic vault bronze medalist, for his yet-to-be-successfully-completed-in-competition vault, the Radivilov (front handspring–triple front [tucked] somersault)–its name actually verified at Rio during the vault event final only for the entire skill level to be banned from competition shortly after the Rio Olympics and removed from the Code of Points due to its high risk probability of injury when performing and/or training that vault. As a result, Shirai now shares another honour of currently owning at least one of only five officially highest-scoring vaults in men's gymnastics with Yang Hank Seon of South Korea, 2012 Olympic vault champion, and Ri Se Gwang of North Korea, 2016 Olympic vault champion, who owns two. All their vaults—the Shirai 2, Yang Hak Seon (front handspring triple twist), Ri Se Gwang (full-twisting double Tsukahara) and Ri Se Gwang 2 (front handspring double piked with ½ twist, or Dragulescu piked)—have a difficulty score of 6.0 in the current quad.

2017 Melbourne World Cup in Melbourne, Australia

On February 22–25, 2017, Shirai competed down under in Melbourne, Australia, at the 2017 Melbourne World Cup with an expanded program to include more events, which added the rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar to his existing and seasoned routines on floor and vault. In the rings qualification, he finished in tenth and last place with the lowest execution and combined scores, and did not make the event final. In his parallel bars qualification, Shirai finished in third place and made the event final, where he won the silver medal with a combined score of 14.433 and had the second highest execution score of 8.433. In his horizontal bar qualification, despite a fall in his routine but due to errors made by his rivals, Shirai finished in fourth place and surprisingly made it into the event final, where he ended up winning gold with a combined score of 13,933, thanks to his high execution score of 8.333—second highest in the final—and more mistakes made by his rivals. In both of his floor and vault qualifications, Shirai finished first and made their event finals. In the floor event final, he easily won the gold medal with a score of 14.700 largely due to his routine's extremely high difficulty score of 7.2, where the next highest among the finalists was only 6.5. Lastly, in the vault event final, he also won gold with an average combined score of 14.916 due to his high execution scores of 9.500 and 9.533, the top two execution score numbers awarded in that final.

Like in the non-FIG Toyota City competition, this FIG World Cup event also holds some significance because in Melbourne, Shirai had successfully completed yet another original skill—his sixth overall—to now be officially named the Shirai 3 on vault automatically; thus, he currently has more skills bearing his name than any other male gymnast in history and second only to Svetlana Khorkina of Russia, who holds the all-time record of having 8 skills named after her across all four apparatuses in women's artistic gymnastics. Practically, the Shirai 3 on vault is a RO–full-twisting BH (also known as Scherbo) entry onto the vaulting platform and then into a back layout with double twist off it. The skill (better known as a "full on–double full off" on vault in practice) was given a difficulty score of 5.4 in this quad.

2017 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Montreal, Canada

In October 2017, Shirai participated in the 2017 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Montreal, Canada, where he won 3 medals—2 golds and 1 bronze. Further expanding his competition program to include routines in his last holdout of pommel horse and compete on all apparatuses, he became eligible for and won his first medal in the all-around event final in Montreal, finishing third behind Xiao Ruoteng and Lin Chaopan of China. His total all-around combined score was 86.431, scoring 15.733 on floor, 13.433 on pommel horse, 13.666 on rings, 15.000 combined average on vault, 14.633 on parallel bars and 13.966 on the horizontal bar. His scores on floor and vault were the highest in the men's all-around competition. Shirai also went on to easily defend his floor individual apparatus title from when the last world championships was held two years ago with a score of 15.633 in the event final and outscoring the second place competitor, Artem Dolgopyat of Israel, who only managed a score of 14.533, by over a full point more. Shirai's significant 1.1-point victory margin in this event final became his widest one yet at a World Championships, outdistancing himself from his rivals even more so than his gold-medal performance in 2015 did. Shirai's passes were the 1) RO–BH–Shirai 3, 2) RO–BH–Ri Jong Song, 3) RO–BH–2½ twist–punch 2½ twist, 4) front full twist–punch Shirai 2, 5) RO–BH–3½ twist–punch full twist, and finally 6) RO–BH–Shirai.

On vault, Shirai had qualified for its event final in second place with an average combined score of 14.949, but subsequently won his first world title on vault scoring the highest average combined score of 14.900—15.200 and 14.600 on his first and second vaults respectively—in a very close final round of competition,^[9][10][11] where he triumphed by the absolute slimmest victory margin of only 0.001 after vault specialist and the 2012 Olympic bronze medalist on vault, Igor Radivilov of Ukraine, came up just short and ended with the closest possible second highest average combined score of 14.899. Shirai also had a little help when the 2012 Olympic champion and top qualifier on vault, Yang Hak Seon of South Korea, withdrew with a hamstring injury after outscoring Shirai by a good margin of 0.334 with an average combined score of 15.283 in qualifications, which is three times higher than the margins between any other two qualifiers where score differences were only around 0.1. It is worth noting that Shirai had competed identical vaults as the ones back at the 2013 World Championships in the same event final, even though he had successfully completed far more difficult and higher scoring vaults previously—namely the Shirai 2 and Shirai 3, where the former had significantly contributed to him winning the bronze medal in vault at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and latter a bit less significantly the gold medal in vault at the 2017 Melbourne World Cup—but difficulty score values of all vaults across the board have since been adjusted lower, including Shirai's to 5.6 and 5.2 respectively.

American Cup FIG Individual All-Around World Cup 2018 in Chicago, United States

On March 3, 2018, Shirai accepted an invitation to compete at the FIG-sanctioned 2018 American Cup in Hoffman Estates (Chicago suburb), United States. In this individual all-around event, Shirai finished sixth with a total of 81.498, despite the highest scores on floor and vault, his two signature apparatuses, with 15.066 and 14.966 respectively, and tied Yul Moldauer of the United States for second highest on parallel bars with 14.500 behind leader Petro Pakhniuk of Ukraine with 14.933. However, Shirai's scores on the other events were relatively weaker in comparison to the top finalists. As defending champion and eventual gold medalist in this all-around competition, Moldauer scored total of 85.964 and outperformed Shirai by a fair margin of almost 4½ points since Moldauer was able to achieve one of the top 3 scores on every apparatus—the top scorer on rings, third highest on vault, tie for second highest on parallel bars and second highest on all remaining apparatuses.

FIG Individual All-Around World Cup 2018 in Tokyo, Japan

On April 14, 2018, Shirai participated in the spring's last FIG-sanctioned World Cup competition with home advantage at the FIG Individual All-Around World Cup 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. In a group of gymnasts competing with various levels of experiences from different countries including Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, Shirai won gold in this individual all-around event final, his first all-around gold medal at an FIG competition, with a total score of 86.064, while countryman Wataru Tanigawa and Sam Mikulak of the United States captured silver and bronze with total scores of 84.399 and 84.098 respectively.

2018 NHK Cup in Tokyo, Japan

On May 19–20, 2018, Shirai participated on home soil again in another smaller non-FIG individual all-around competition, intended mainly for Japanese gymnasts from local gymnastics clubs and universities across the country, at the NHK Cup in Tokyo, Japan. Shirai ended up winning the silver medal with a total combined score of 257.895 as well as the highest score of 15.433 on floor and third highest of 14.833 on vault. The gold medal went to Shirai's friend, the legendary Uchimura, who came from behind to win with a combined total of 258.629 that also has the highest score of 14.966 on the horizontal bar and second highest of 14.633 on floor.