Japanese gymnasts named Paris best male individual sport team

PARIS (Kyodo) — Japan men’s artistic gymnastics team was named the Best Male Team in Individual Sport of Paris 2024 by the Association of National Olympic Committees on Wednesday after winning the Olympic gold medal this summer.

Japan’s team of Daiki Hashimoto, Kazuma Kaya, Wataru Tanigawa, Shinnosuke Oka and Takaaki Sugino snatched the gold after China made mistakes with the last apparatus, the horizontal bar, at Bercy Arena in Paris.

“I didn’t have any pressure because I had a lot of time practicing and I was confident,” captain Kaya said at the award ceremony in Estoril, Portugal.

“I was telling my teammates during the game ‘Never give up, never give up, never give up,’ we helped each other and we got the gold medal. My dream came true. Thank you very much, thank you teammates.”

Letsile Tebogo of Botswana won the Best Male Athlete of Paris 2024 after winning the country’s first gold medal in the Summer and Winter Olympics in the men’s 200 meters.

Julien Alfred of St. Lucia was named the Best Female Athlete of Paris 2024 after she won the women’s 100 meters also for her nation’s first Olympic gold.