Japan’s Kohei Uchimura put in a commanding all-around performance at the world gymnastics championships on Tuesday to show he was ready to step into the shoes left vacant by Olympic champion Yang Wei.
Uchimura had snapped at Yang’s heels during the final at last year’s Beijing Games but in the end was powerless to stop a man who was determined to succeed in front of his home fans.
Fourteen months on and with Yang now retired, a huge smile lit up Uchimura’s face as he topped men’s qualifying at the O2 Arena that is set to host the gymnastics competition at the 2012 Olympics.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The day, however, ended on a sour note for China’s Chen Yibing after a botched landing from the rings — on which he is the Olympic and world title holder — cost him a place in the apparatus final.
Things could not have been better for 20-year-old Uchimura as he broke the 15-point barrier in five of the six apparatus to finish with a total of 90.925, a 1.575 point lead over former European champion Maxim Deviatovski of Russia.
“I feel great except the vault landing. I can win the gold medal if I hit everything in the final on Thursday,” he said.
American Tim McNeill, Briton Daniel Keatings and Jonathan Horton of the US completed the top five.
The athletes would have been further boosted by withdrawal of charismatic European champion Fabian Hambuechen, who hobbled out of training on crutches at the weekend.
With no team medal up for grabs in London, Asian powerhouse China, who won seven of the eight men’s titles at last year’s Olympics, have opted to concentrate on the apparatus finals.
Instead of vying to succeed twice world champion Yang as all-round winner, the likes of Zou Kai — a triple Olympic gold medalist — Yan Mingyong, Feng Zhe and Zhang Hongtao set the benchmark in their speciality apparatus.
Zou performed a relatively conservative routine on the horizontal bar with three release and catch manoeuvres but that did not stop the judges from awarding him 15.600.
Zhang was the pick of the Chinese athletes as he deftly swivelled around the pommel horse to draw 16.275.
The biggest surprise of the day was when Chen ruined his authoritative display on the rings by somersaulting through the air with his legs splayed during a messy dismount.
He did not need the judges to tell him that he could miss out on a place in the final and his score of 15.125 would have eliminated him in qualifying last August in the Chinese capital.
After an anxious seven-hour wait on Tuesday, his worst nightmare came true as Chen finished 11th to miss the cut.
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