Takeru Kitazono

is a Japanese male artistic gymnast. At the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he won five gold medals in the all-around, floor, rings, parallel bars, and horizontal bar competitions. He was the first artistic gymnast ever to achieve such a feat in a single Youth Olympic Games. He represented Japan at the 2020 Summer Olympics where he won a silver medal in the team event.

Personal life Kitazono was born on 21 October 2002 in Osaka, Japan. He started gymnastics when he was three years old after his mother enrolled him in a nearby gym because he was fascinated with a Japanese superhero television series Kamen Rider Hibiki.

Kitazono has received two awards. At the 2018 Japanese Olympic Committee Sports Awards, he received a Rookie Award.

2019 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.

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. During event finals he won gold on pommel horse and parallel bars and placed seventh on floor exercise.

2021 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. 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. 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 the 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.