Kohei Uchimura’s Japan finally toppled China at the gymnastics World Championship but Britain warned it was ready to challenge for OlympicGOLD after taking the men’s team silver.
The Japanese scored 270.818 points to take gold after four consecutive silver medals as Britain won its first world men’s team medal with 270.345 and China bronze with 269.959.
It ended Olympic champion China’s 12-year domination of the world team event in which it had won six straight titles. The much-hyped clash between the Asian giants failed to ignite Glasgow’s Hydro Arena with Japan leading out-of-sorts China all the way despite a fall by Uchimura and two by Yusuke Tanaka.
Compared to Japan and China, the British had no major errors over the six rotations — floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar.
Uchimura, 26, opened on the floor with Kenzo Shirai scoring highest to pull 2.7 points ahead of China from the outset. The Japanese led on pommel horse before the Chinese came back strong on rings.
Japan held its lead on the vault and parallel bars despite Tanaka coming unstuck, before also falling from the high bar.
But there was more drama in store when Uchimura, startled by the deafening roar by the crowd on seeing Britain’s Max Whitlock’s score for his final floor routine, also tumbled off the high bar.
But the Japanese, who lost the title last year by just a tenth of a point, held on to claim their sixth men’s teamGOLD. — AFP