“When gymnastics began more than 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece, the gymnastics arena was the center of cultural activity. People gathered there not only to practice gymnastics, but also to understand art, culture and philosophy. The Greeks believed that exercise, when combined with intellectual activity, could achieve a balance of mind and body. Plato, Aristotle and Homer were enthusiastic advocates of the reinforcement of good gymnastic practice.”This is how the Hangzhou Asian Games English website introduced artistic gymnastics. With a long and rich history, it is clear that gymnastics is not just a sport, but an art that combines culture, knowledge, and physical education, and was highly favored by thinkers of the time.The term “Artistic Gymnastics” was coined to describe artistic gymnastics for a reason.Gymnastics was included in the first Olympic Games in 1896, the forerunner of the modern Olympic Games, along with athletics, cycling, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, and wrestling. Like the Olympics, it’s a classic foundational sport rooted in European culture.Gymnastics was soon followed by artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and trampoline, and nowadays, under the umbrella of gymnastics, the Olympic and Asian Games have three sub-disciplines: artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and trampoline.There are 18 gold medals in gymnastics, 14 in artistic gymnastics, and two each in rhythmic gymnastics and trampoline.Men’s artistic gymnastics is based on six events: floor, uneven bars, rings, parallel bars, vault, and bars. The gold medals in each event plus the all-around and team events, which combine all six events, bring the total to eight.Women’s artistic gymnastics, which won six gold medals, was composed of four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise, as well as the all-around and team competitions.Rhythmic gymnastics consists of individual and team competitions, and trampoline consists of men’s and women’s individual competitions.Korea will not compete in trampoline, but only in artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics for men and women.Artistic gymnastics at this year’s Asian Games will not receive much attention as it coincides with the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, which qualifies athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.Twelve countries will compete in the Olympic men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics team events.The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) awards the first through third-place teams in the men’s and women’s team competitions at the world championships two years before the Olympic Games, with the remaining nine spots going to the world championships one year before.China and Japan finished first and second in the men’s team competition at last year’s world championships to earn a direct ticket to Paris.The Korean men’s team, which finished eighth, will send its first team to the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, rather than the Asian Games, for its ninth consecutive team appearance since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.The Korean women’s team will also send one team to the World Championships after finishing 13th in last year’s World Championships team event qualifier despite a lack of form.The women’s team has never competed in an Olympic team event on its own, except as the host nation at the 1988 Seoul Games.If the team punches its ticket to Paris, it will be a landmark event for Korean gymnastics. The women’s team is coming off a silver medal at this year’s Asian Championships.Yeo Seo-jung (Jecheon City Hall), the bronze medalist on vault at Tokyo 2020, gave up her dream of defending her Asian Games vault title for the greater good of qualifying for the Olympic team event.Artistic gymnastics at the Asian Games is expected to be dominated by China, which has a huge talent pool, and Japan, which has a large gymnastics base.According to the Korean Gymnastics Federation, China and Japan will field a team of 1.5 athletes in the men’s event, which is equivalent to the first team in terms of skill level.After finishing fifth and sixth in the women’s team event at last year’s world championships, Japan and China’s first teams will head to the world championships instead of the Asian Games to secure their immediate Olympic qualification.Korea will look to Kim Han-sol (27, Seoul City Hall) and Shin Jae-hwan (25, Jecheon City Hall), the 2020 Tokyo Olympic vault gold medalists, for Asian Games gold on men’s floor and vault.The men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics will be held Sept. 24-29.Rhythmic gymnastics will see Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan battle for the title, while trampoline will be a battle between 토토사이트 China and Japan.