Let’s rank everybody! This week, the world’s most athletic university students competed against each other to see who is spending the least time on their homework and the most time on beam, so let’s break down the final WAG medal count from the 2025 University Games.

1. Japan – 9

TEAM GOLD
Ushioku Kohane
Miyata Shoko
Okamura Mana
Fukasawa Kokoro
Ashikawa Urara

ALL-AROUND GOLD
Miyata Shoko

VAULT GOLD
Miyata Shoko

BALANCE BEAM GOLD
Ashikawa Urara

FLOOR EXERCISE GOLD
Miyata Shoko

ALL-AROUND SILVER
Okamura Mana

VAULT SILVER
Ushioku Kohane

FLOOR EXERCISE SILVER
Ushioku Kohane

UNEVEN BARS BRONZE
Miyata Shoko

This year’s University Games were officially renamed the Miyata Shoko Immersive Vengeance Experience. After being removed from Japan’s 2024 Olympic team for drinking and smoking—or, as the Soviet teams called it, the minimum entrance requirement—Miyata is back and excelling.

She opened the competition by leading the Japanese to victory in the team final with a 55.100 AA performance—becoming one of the few athletes to have reached 55 this year in a real judging scenario—and followed that by winning the all-around final the next day by a hefty margin of more than a fall.

Miyata went on to take vault gold with a DTY and Lopez, just outpacing her teammate Ushioku Kohane thanks to the 0.2 directional bonus. Ushioku scored slightly higher for her DTY and Tsuk 1.5, but they were both backward post-flights, so she didn’t get the bonus.

The gold streak ended in the bars final with Miyata earning bronze, a routine capped by a solid stick on her full-twisting double tuck dismount but just shy on D-score compared to the gold and silver medalists. She then came back in the final session of event finals to finish her competition with another casual gold on floor.

In all, Miyata came away with five medals, four of them gold. She missed only a medal on beam, where she was per-countryed out of the final despite a 13.850 in qualification.

Half of the 18 WAG medals on offer went to Japan’s team of ringers, all of whom have appeared on Olympic or world championship teams over the last two years, and their class showed from the start. They won the team final by an entire routine, defeating the silver medalists Spain by over 12 points while qualifying the maximum 10 athletes into individual finals.

The 2021 world beam champion Ashikawa Urara added the only non-Miyata individual gold to Japan’s tally with a confident and precise routine—to steady a fallsy beam final overall—for 14.166. Olympian Ushioku Kohane had to play second fiddle to Miyata on both of her specialty events, but she came away with silvers on vault and floor.

Okamura “don’t call me a beam specialist” Mana took the silver medal in the all-around final with another four hits, surviving getting her D-Score smeeshed on beam and still recording the top beam total of the final. One of the only blips in Japan’s entire competition came in the beam final, when top qualifier Okamura fell twice (and still finished fourth). Fukasawa Kokoro was the only member of the Japanese team not to come away with an individual medal here after having to tuck her Stalder Tkatchev in the bars final in a tribute to Riley McCusker 2017.

2. Taiwan – 2

BALANCE BEAM SILVER
Tonya Paulsson

ALL-AROUND BRONZE
Tonya Paulsson

The competition’s only other multi-medal country was Tonya Paulsson. Well, Taiwan in the form of Tonya Paulsson. She emerged from her “all the fourth places, please” Asian Championship to finally get a tangible reward for what a good year she’s having.

In the team and all-around competitions, Paulsson’s lovely execution delivered her second and third 52+ AA scores of the year, with the 52.065 in the AA final proving just enough for her to sneak into third place. Her supreme beam performance in the event final garnered the top execution score of the final and a silver medal behind only the difficulty of Ashikawa.

But fear not, Paulsson did return to her traditional fourth place in the floor final.

3. China – 1

UNEVEN BARS GOLD
Yang Fanyuwei

China did not go for a team medal here with only a two-athlete delegation, but Yang Fanyuwei was able to deliver the only non-Japan gold of the competition with her performance on bars.

After qualifying in second place, Yang went for her big-girl routine in the event final, pulling out the Jaeger full for a 6.7 D score and having one of her good dismount days for a 15.000 total. Yang and Kaylia Nemour remain the only athletes this year to have gone 15 on bars.

4. Spain – 1

TEAM SILVER
Lais Masferrer
Ainara Sautua Molina
Maia Llacer Sirera
Irene Ros
Lorena Medina

The Spanish women appeared destined for team silver after rolling through vault and bars in the first two rotations, but then a beam implosion with a counting 10, and then a leadoff fall on floor, made things…a little dicey.

The squad ultimately came through with three hits to finish the floor rotation and confirm the silver medal in what was very much an equal team effort rather than a star-led performance. Only one Spanish routine made an event final, but everyone contributed multiple counting routines to the team score (save for bars specialist Sautua, who competed just one apparatus and was the lone event finalist).

4. Hungary – 1

UNEVEN BARS SILVER
Zoja Szekely

Zoja Szekely put together a very strong performance in the bars final, utilizing valuable connections and performing them with legs together and feet pointed for a 6.0 D and a 13.8 total that trailed only the wild D-score of Yang. This is an under-the-radar routine that could very believably go low 14s and make the world final.

6. France – 1

TEAM BRONZE
Celia Serber
Alisson Lapp
Maeva Guery
Alizee Letrange-Mouakit

It was an adventure of a team day for France. Competing in the second subdivision, they had to wait through subdivisions three and four to see if their total would hold up against some of the more favored teams.

When the South Koreans had a beam implosion with five falls across the routines from Lee Yunseo and Eom Dohyun, it seemed France had it in the bag, but then Korea kept creeping back up and ended just .150 behind the bronze-winning French team, who transformed entirely into tears in the stands when the final scores came in.

Celia Serber’s 13.600 on bars and exactly correct DLO dismount led the team’s performance, and Serber came so very close to an all-around medal, just a third of a tenth behind Paulsson in that final.

6. Austria – 1

VAULT BRONZE
Selina Kickinger

An excellent reward for the lovely competition put together by Selina Kickinger. Ultimately, she didn’t have the difficulty of the Japanese gold and silver medalists in the vault final, but her Yurchenko full stood out from the crowd of Yurchenko fulls for its height and layout position, earning the best E score of any vault in the final. Her strong control on her handspring pike 1/2 landing also earned an E over 9, the only athlete to do that for both vaults.

6. Germany – 1

BALANCE BEAM BRONZE
Emma Malewski

Emma Malewski delivered some joy for the host German team, recalling her European beam title from 2022 in which she resolutely stayed on the beam for gold despite a lower D score than the favorites. Here, she came up following some errors from others to perform a sturdy, confident, experienced bronze medal routine.

Malewski was representing the Chemnitz University of Technology at this meet, but she is on her way to the Clemson team for the next NCAA season.

6. Belgium – 1

FLOOR EXERCISE BRONZE
Jade Vansteenkiste

Jade Vansteenkiste kept up the performance reputation she developed back as a junior with her “for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for cocktails” floor routine at this event. Her exercise earned a bronze medal, though an OOB on her opening pass did make things a little closer than would have been expected after her bigger totals in qualification and all-around that established her as a medal favorite.

Valiant Efforts for Zero Medals

–Switzerland’s team of just three gymnasts, all three forced to compete counting scores on all events, very nearly snatched a team medal ahead of a number of complete teams. They needed a 12.000 on the final beam routine of the competition to move ahead of France for bronze, and while it didn’t happen, Switzerland’s was the actual second-best team performance of the day, just without the luxury of dropping falls that the others had.

–New Zealand’s Alisa Wada, who had never before made a final of anything outside of the New Zealand national championships, impressed in the beam final here with her strong leg positions and toe point. Very much a take-notice kind of routine.

–You go Kate McDonald. Kate McDonald hasn’t vaulted in three years but did a handspring repulsion, which gave the Australians a full team total—and ended up making the all-around final with it, so had to do it again.