While gymnast Daiki Hashimoto cemented his place as one of the sport’s new stars on Tuesday with his gold medal-winning performance on the horizontal bar, it’s the first gold he won at the Tokyo Olympics that may leave a more lasting legacy on the sport and its fandom.
The Games are no stranger to controversy — especially when a judge’s decision is the final difference between gold and silver — but the furor surrounding Hashimoto’s first-place finish in the men’s all-around competition last week stood out not only for its intensity, but for the response it provoked from International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) officials.
Chinese netizens’ reaction to Hashimoto’s 0.4-points victory over China’s Xiao Ruoteng, including thousands of abusive messages directed at the 19-year-old gymnast and FIG on social media, prompted the federation to take the unusual step of explaining the deductions and penalties assigned to Hashimoto after a botched dismount on his vault caused him to step off the mat.