China second, Japan take bronze in FIG World Championships
DOHA (QAT) AGU Office: China finished second behind champions Russia in the men’s team final at the FIG Artistic World Championships in Stuttgart (Germany) on Wednesday.
Russia finished with a huge score of 261.726, with China second (260.729) while Japan, who were 2.5 points behind their Asian rivals, came third.
Less than a year before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Russia avenged a narrow defeat at last year’s worlds in Doha, when China won by 0.049 of a point.
China, Russia and Japan had exchanged the lead as the teams rotated through the six different elements.
China seize control in parallel bars
China seemed to have seized control on their penultimate challenge, the parallel bars.
Their third and final man on the apparatus, Zou Jingyuan, delivered an imaginative and technically perfect routine to score a huge 16.383, by far the highest mark by any man in any discipline on the day.
The second best was the 15.3 by Russian Nikita Nagornyy, also on the bars.
Zou’s score also gave his team a total of 45.141 on the bars, the most by any of the eight finalists in any discipline.
China led Russia by 1.4 points going into the last routine, when the two nations met at the high bars for a final showdown.
Japan finished with the floor exercises and a series of errors ended their chances of finishing in the top two.
As China went first, Sun immediately handed the initiative back to Russia as he slid off the bar to finish with just 12.766.
Even though the last Chinese competitor Lin Chaopan scored 14.5, Nagornyy held his nerve and scored 14.46.
