The competition exists out of two separate rounds. In the qualification, each team performs twice, though each with different apparatus: once with balls and once with clubs and hoops. Each performance gets scored by a jury on a scale of 0 to 10, and receives a difficulty score and an execution score. The eight best scores advance to the final, in which the teams perform twice again. The athlete with the highest score in the final wins the competition.
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Fourteen teams qualified for the event with the team representing the ROC as the traditional favorites for the medals, having won every edition of the Olympic competition since 2000 and every edition of the world championships since 2015. The team of Bulgaria was the last to defeat them at an intercontinental competition back in 2014, though Italy also came very close at the most recent edition of the world championships. The home team from Japan was one of the potential medal contenders, with Belarus, Israel, and China as some of the outsiders for the medals.