Rotterdam, Netherlands – Daiki Hashimoto successfully defended his men’s individual all-around title at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Rotterdam on Thursday ahead of China’s Yang Haonan and Britain’s Joe Fraser.

Having already claimed team gold the previous day, the 25-year-old from Narita, Chiba Prefecture, secured his seventh world title in the Netherlands and his fourth consecutive all-around crown.

He took it by a comfortable margin, finishing 1.799 points ahead of Yang. It was the biggest winning margin in a men’s all-around at an Olympics or a worlds in 13 years.

Hashimoto is a worthy successor to the elegant Kohei Uchimura, who won a record six consecutive world all-around titles between 2009 and 2015.

Initially trailing the unflappable Yang, and despite a modest start on the first two apparatuses (floor exercise and rings), the three-time Olympic champion eventually surged to victory thanks to two outstanding performances on the parallel bars and the horizontal bar.

Reigning…