Takeru Kitazono

In 2017, Kitazono fractured his left ankle during training. The injury was still troubling him at the national trials for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[6]

Kitazono was selected to represent Japan at the third Youth Olympic Games. While there he won an unprecedented five gold medals – in the all-around, floor exercise, rings, parallel bars, and horizontal bar – beating the previous record of three gold medals won by Nikita Nagornyy and Giarnni Regini-Moran at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games. He finished sixth on pommel horse.[3] In addition to his five gold medals, Kitazono also received a silver medal in the mixed multi-discipline team (teams were randomly composed of gymnasts from various countries and various disciplines). Kitazono was assigned to the team named after British gymnast Max Whitlock.

Kitazono later competed at the All-Japan Team Championships where he helped his club finish seventh.[7]

Takeru Kitazono at a 2019 Junior World Artistic Gymnastics Championships victory ceremony.

In January, Kitazono competed at the RD761 Junior International Cup where he helped Japan win gold, and individually, he placed first on the all-around, pommel horse, rings and parallel bars, and he placed seventh on the horizontal bar as well as sixth on floor exercise.[8]

Kitazono was selected to represent Japan at the inaugural Junior World Championships alongside Ryosuke Doi and Shinnosuke Oka. While there the team won gold in the team final finishing nearly 3 points ahead of second place Ukraine. Although Kitazono recorded the third-highest all-around score of the day, he was left off the podium due to both teammates scoring higher and the two-per-country rule taking place.[9] During event finals he won gold on pommel horse and parallel bars and placed seventh on floor exercise.[10]

In April, Kitazono damaged the ligaments in both elbows while competing on the horizontal bar at the All-Japan Championships, their national selection trials for the 2020 Olympic Games at home in Tokyo.[6]

At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Kitazono, 18, competed as part of Team Japan's relatively young men's team on team event that also included Daiki Hashimoto, 19, Kazuma Kaya, 24, and Kakeru Tanigawa, 22, with none having any past Olympic experience.[11] With a completely new roster, no former Olympic male gymnast of Japan returned to lead team event. Kitazono would later win the Olympic team silver in the men's team all-around competition. The team posted a total score of 262.397, which was only 0.103 behind the winning Russian Olympic Committee team.[12] If Japan had managed to secure team gold at these home Games, Kitazono would have broken the record and become Japan's youngest male gymnast in history to win Olympic gold. He would have been 18 years, 9 months and 5 days old. The record is currently being held by Kenzō Shirai at 19 years, 11 months and 15 days old, who also became the first ever Japanese male teenage gymnast to win Olympic gold when Japan took team gold at the 2016 Games. Hashimoto, who was only 6 days older than Shirai, joined him as Japan's second (youngest) male teenage gymnast to win Olympic gold after winning the individual all-around title in 2021. Shirai broke long-standing record of Eizo Kenmotsu, who won team gold as a 20-year-8-month-and-11-day-old nearly 49 years ago at the 1968 Games.