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China’s women gymnasts delivered a performance of ruthless elegance to storm to a crushing victory in the Asian Games team event yesterday, as North Korea pipped Japan to silver. |
A day after a patchy performance saw the Chinese men’s team beaten into third place, the women dominated their opponents at Incheon’s Namdong Gymnasium.
Chinese gymnasts filled the top three spots in the floor routine and the top five in the uneven bars, where Yao Jinnan beat world champion Huang Huidan into second with a giddying complex routine.
Huang gave a superb display of precision on the bars and a near-flawless dismount, but Yao went better, and finished the day top of the qualifying table for today’s individual all-round final. She will be joined by Shang Chunsong, who was eighth in the event in last year’s world championships.
Shang said she had let herself down in the uneven bars—despite recording a 14.15, well ahead of the highest-scoring non-Chinese gymnast, Japan’s Yuriko Yamamoto on 13.75. “I made some mistakes in the uneven bars, but I can manage and practice more, hope that I can show my best performance in uneven bars,” she said.
For North Korea, 2008 Olympic vault gold medallist Hong Un-Jon led the way with a superb display on her specialist apparatus—including the day’s only execution marks above 9.0. She was well supported by her teammates but the Chinese juggernaut was too much to catch, running out with 229.3 points to North Korea’s 214.65, with Japan on 214.35 edged into bronze.
Thanks, Kim
North Korea’s Kang Yong-Mi said the reclusive state’s supremo Kim Jong-Un had inspired the team to get their silver. “When I performed I thought ‘the dear leader is watching over us’ and that thought gave me energy and power,” she told reporters.
The Japanese tried to emulate the tactics their men used to success on Sunday, going for conservative, lower-difficulty routines but executing them well. But the cautious approach left them well behind the technical brilliance of the Chinese and allowed North Korea to sneak ahead.
Japanese captain Mizuho Nagai had the chance to snatch the second spot in the last round of the vault—her specialist discipline—but fluffed her landing to leave the team short. “This was my first time being the team captain and I felt responsible to lead the team, but I ended up making misses. I feel sorry to our team members,” she said.
The hosts were fourth on 208.725, let down by a shoddy display on the balance beam. On the vault, 39-year-old Uzbek Oksana Chusovitina showed gymnastics is not just a young woman’s game with fine display to finish second behind Hong.
It means tomorrow’s individual vault final will be a replay of the 2008 Olympics final, when Chusovitina had to settle for silver behind the North Korean. The rest of the Uzbek team were not even born when the veteran vaulter, who first competed for the old Soviet Union, won her first world championship medals in 1991.
