Yang Wei from Hubei province clinched the men's individual
all-around title at Chinese national gymnastics championship here
on Tuesday.
Yang, 29, the triple world champion at Aarhus gymnastic worlds
2006, edged out Chen Yibing from Tianjin municipality to score a
total of 93.40 points.
Yang sustained his performance in Aarhus to dominate in most of
the disciplines, establishing a 1.75 points advantage over Chen
before the last round. Then he picked an less challenging routine
in the final apparatus, high bar, to wrap up his title with
ease.
Yang earned the highest score in parallel bars with 16.05 and
second highest in rings with 16.66.
Chen, the rings winner in Aarhus gymnastic worlds, scored 16.900
points in the rings to lead the apparatus.
Yang made flawless routines in all the disciplines to be
crowned.
Chen, nicknamed "king of rings" took the silver with 91.950.
Teng Haibin, the pommel horse champion at Athens Olympic Games, won
the bronze for the Beijing delegation with 91.35 points
Feng Jing, the 2001 all-around world champion from Guangdong,
finished fourth with 91.250 points.
"I have to take each match so serious as I am playing in the
Olympic Games. I need to avoid any blunder in the all-around for no
one can afford to fall down even for once," said Yang Wei.
Huang Yubin, the head coach of the national team, was quite
satisfied with his gymnasts.
"I am very happy with their performances today. It's almost a
success rate of 100 percent. We made serial mistakes last month at
the national champions tournament, but it turned out to be a great
improvement in stability this time," said Huang.
"It's a contradiction between difficulty and stability. Without
difficulty, you can not get competitive, but high difficulty will
result in less stability. How can you maintain a balance between
them, that's to practice. Practice makes perfect," added Huang.
The national championship is going through from June 9 to 18,
which is functioning as a trial for a squad to contend the Beijing
Olympic Games and World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on
September.
(Xinhua News Agency June 14, 2007)