Kenzo Shirai
| Kenzo Shirai | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| — Gymnast — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Nickname(s) |
Mr. Twist Twist Prince (Japanese) |
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| Country represented |
 Japan
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| Born |
August 24, 1996 Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan |
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| Height | 161 cm (5 ft 3 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eponymous skills |
Shirai (floor) quadruple twist backwards |
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Medal record
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Mr. Twist
Shirai (floor) quadruple twist backwards
Shirai II (floor) triple twist forwards
Shirai III (floor) laid out double back with 3 twists
Shirai (vault) round-off, back-handspring, triple twists
Kenzo Shirai (白井 健三 Shirai Kenzō?, born 24 August 1996 in Yokohama, Japan) is a Japanese artistic gymnast. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, he won gold in the team event and bronze in the vault final.
Unlike many athletes of his level, Shirai attends school regularly. He has one six-hour practice varying from 5-7 days per week.
Shirai graduated high school in March 2015, and soon after was accepted to study at Nippon Sport Science University in the southern outskirts of Tokyo. This university is also where many other members of the Japanese national team of gymnastics study and/or train.
Shirai got started in artistic gymnastics at a very young age, after being influenced by his parents and two older brothers. He said, "For as long as I can remember, I was a gym rat." His parents were gym owners of the Tsurumi Junior Gymnastics Club. Instead of paying for day care, they brought him to the gym. He particularly loved to use the trampoline, which developed his extreme mastery of twisting skills.
Shirai has five skills named after him as he was the first to perform them in major international competitions. Those skills are the "Shirai", quad-twisting back layout on floor, "Shirai II", triple-twisting front layout on floor, "Shirai III", triple-twisting double back layout on floor, "Shirai" or "Shirai-Kim", triple-twisting Yurchenko layout on vault and "Shirai II", 3.5-twisting Yurchenko layout on vault. Shirai was only fourteen years old when he was first able to perform the quad-twisting layout on floor with a hard landing. Before Shirai successfully completed the 3.5-twisiting Yurchenko in the Rio Olympics, he was also well known for his ability to perform the triple-twisting Yurchenko (TTY) vault, something accomplished by only a handful of gymnasts including his teammate and role model, Kōhei Uchimura. Among other distinguishing facts, Shirai was the youngest ever member of the national men's artistic gymnastics team for Japan.
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Wikipedia