By the time Kohei Uchimura made his international debut in 2007, the pursuit of perfection in men’s gymnastics had begun to feel like a relic of a bygone era. The perfect 10, the iconic score made famous by Nadia Comaneci and others, had been replaced by a new scoring system, designed to minimize the scandals that plagued the sport at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Under the new system, gymnastics routines were graded on the difficulty of their content and how well that difficulty was executed. Having separate scores for difficulty and execution was supposed to make it fairer for gymnasts who took big risks in their exercises. In reality — at least at the beginning — it rewarded gymnasts who tried harder routines, whether they executed skills well or not.
Then came Uchimura.