Daiki Hashimoto has been at the centre of men's all-around gymnastics since he won the Olympic title in Tokyo at the age of 19. He is now the defending world all-around champion, after winning in Jakarta in 2025, and arrives in Rotterdam as one of two Japanese favourites for the title.
Olympic champion at 19
At Tokyo 2020 Hashimoto won the all-around and the horizontal bar, and took team silver behind the Russian team. That made him the natural successor to Kohei Uchimura as the face of Japanese gymnastics.
World titles
Hashimoto's world championship record is the strongest of any active all-arounder: - 2019 Stuttgart: team bronze. - 2021 Kitakyushu: all-around silver and horizontal bar silver. - 2022 Liverpool: all-around gold, plus silver with the team, on floor and on horizontal bar. - 2023 Antwerp: all-around, team and horizontal bar gold. - 2025 Jakarta: all-around gold and horizontal bar silver.
That adds up to five world titles and twelve world medals.
The hard days
His career also shows how unforgiving the sport is. In Paris he fell on the horizontal bar dismount in qualification and from the pommel horse in the all-around final, and finished sixth as team-mate Shinnosuke Oka took the title. He still won team gold. In 2026 he took all-around bronze at the Asian Games, behind Oka in silver.
Rotterdam 2026
Hashimoto was second in all-around qualification after the first day, on 84.632, with 14.800 on parallel bars and 14.533 on pommel horse. A fall on his Cassina, a release on horizontal bar, kept him out of the high bar final, one of his best apparatus. The all-around final on 22 October is likely to be a straight contest between him and Oka, unless the rest of the field closes the gap.
