You're reading: China wins 2nd straight Olympic gold in gymnastics, Ukraine off the medals podium

LONDON — Their closest rivals were still on the floor competing when the Chinese whipped out five big gold stars and held them up in the shape of their flag.

Why wait?

The Chinese won their second straight Olympic title in men’s gymnastics
and third and in four games in a rout Monday, making fools of everyone
who wrote them off after a dismal performance in qualifying.

“We
don’t have any faults. That’s our secret to beat the Japanese and to
beat everyone,” Zhang Chenglong said. “In preliminaries, we had a little
bit of faults. But tonight was completely perfect.”

Well, almost.

It
took five minutes and a video review to sort out the silver and bronze
medalists after Japan questioned the score of three-time world champion
Kohei Uchimura on pommel horse, the last routine. Japan jumped from
fourth to second after judges revised Uchimura’s score, bumping Britain
down to bronze and Ukraine off the medals podium.

It
was the British men’s first team medal in a century, and it set off
raucous celebrations at the O2 Arena. Even Princes William and Harry
joined in.

“To win a medal in your home games, I’ll take that any
day,” Kristian Thomas said. “We never actually had the silver in our
hands, so there’s no real disappointment.”

Tell that to the
Japanese, who were bested by the Chinese yet again. Japan was the
runner-up to China in Beijing, as well as at the last four world
championships.

And unlike last year’s world championships, where
the Japanese had appeared to close the gap on China, this one wasn’t
even close. China finished with 275.997 points, more than four points
better than Japan.

China now has gone eight years without losing at a major competition.

“At
the very beginning it was fourth for Japan so I couldn’t say anything. I
couldn’t think anything,” a somber Uchimura said. “I was thinking,
‘It’s fourth, it’s fourth.’ Even after it was changed, I was not too
happy.”

The Americans weren’t all that happy, either.

Bronze
medalists four years ago, they could practically feel their first gold
since 1984 after finishing No. 1 in qualifying, with captain Jon Horton
jokingly asking if they could claim their prizes. But everyone gets a
do-over in team finals, and whatever momentum the Americans had
evaporated when Danell Leyva and John Orozco fell on pommel horse, their
second event.

They wound up fifth, six points behind China and almost two behind Britain.

“There’s definitely disappointment,” Horton said. “We are one of the best teams in the world.”

But China is in a class by itself.

The
Chinese have been like playground bullies most of the last decade,
sauntering into every competition and scooping up as many gold medals as
possible: Team golds at the last five world championships and Olympic
titles in Sydney and Beijing, where they won all but one of the men’s
medals.

They probably would have claimed that, too, had they bothered to contend for vault.

But
with most of the Beijing squad moving on and a rule change putting a
premium on all-arounders, China has looked — dare we say it? —
vulnerable of late. Chen Yibing, a double gold medalist in Beijing, even
tried to dampen the expectations this spring, saying it would be
“extremely hard” for the Chinese to defend their team title. It didn’t
get any easier when Teng Haibin, the 2004 gold medalist on pommel horse,
dropped out with an injury Thursday and had to be replaced by Guo
Weiyang.

An abysmal performance in qualifying only furthered the doubt when they finished sixth. Sixth!

While everyone else was gleefully expecting the end of a dynasty, China was as cocky and cool as always.

“We
have the abilities and the skills,” said Chen Yibing, one of only two
holdovers from the Beijing squad. Asked when he knew his team would win,
he said: “After getting up from bed.”

China doesn’t have Japan’s
stylish elegance, Britain’s youthful exuberance or even the Americans’
flair for the dramatic. What the Chinese do have, however, is sheer,
brute strength. Chen set the tone in the very first event on still
rings, where he is the defending Olympic gold medalist and four-time
world champion.

Simply watching the event makes most folks grab
their arms and scream for mercy. He flips from one skill to another with
silky smoothness — at one point lifting his head a bit higher as if to
say, “Oh, you liked that one? How about this?” The cables stayed
perfectly still when he did a somersault into a handstand, the veins
bulging in his arms and neck the only signs of exertion.

The
Chinese only got better from there, with half their 18 scores at 15.6s
or higher. Compare that to Japan, which had five, or the British, who
had four.

When Zhang’s feet slammed into the mat after his pommel
horse routine, China’s last of the night, he let out a roar the rest of
the world will be hearing for four years. While the rest of his
teammates broke into their latest victory celebration, Chen leaned
against a wall and buried his face in his hands, unable to stop the
tears.

“Our rivals were not necessarily stronger than in previous years,” Zhang said, “so we kept a cool mind.”

Japan
had to keep its cool, too. Uchimura lost control on his dismount,
flailing wildly before he got his feet beneath him. Judges initially
gave him just a 5.4 for difficulty, and his overall score of 13.466 left
Japan in fourth place.

But the Japanese coaches rushed to the
judges to protest, saying Uchimura’s dismount should have been worth
more. While judges huddled around a video screen, Uchimura and his
teammates sat stone-faced against a wall.

Finally it was announced
that judges had revised Uchimura’s score, giving him an additional
seven-tenths credit on his dismount. That boosted Japan’s total to
271.952, good enough for the silver medal but not the gold that Uchimura
and his teammates crave.

“This is the Olympics, and this is a
special environment and we really couldn’t do as we planned,” Uchimura
said. “It was really difficult.”

Difficult, it seems, for everyone but the Chinese.