Japan, China lead men's qualifying at world championships

GLASGOW, Scotland — Few things are as assured lately as China and Japan’s dominance atop men’s gymnastics. Only the sun rising in the East might be more reliable. Maybe.

So it was no surprise that they were the top two qualifiers at the world championships at The SSE Hydro on Sunday. For a change of pace, Japan scored 358.884 points and was in first, with four sessions complete, for the first time since the 2011 worlds.

China, meanwhile, qualified in second with 357.027 points.

Four sessions will be contested on Monday, but there’s really no team poised to unseat the most dominant teams of the past decade. No matter where Japan and China qualify, they’re favored going into the final on Wednesday.

Rather than being a matter of if one of the teams will win gold, it’s a question of which one.

“I have never beaten China, so I would never know (what it would feel like),” Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, the five-time defending world champion, said through a translator.

“I think we need to have strong guts to win the competition.”

The Chinese have won the past six worlds titles and past two Olympic golds. For most of that time, Japan has played the bridesmaid – winning silver in each worlds and Olympics since 2007.

The only times since 2006 that China and Japan did not qualify first and second, respectively, was in the 2011 worlds and 2012 Olympics. China still won gold both times, and Japan claimed silver.

“The performance was not perfect this time, as everyone has had some error in some skill,” said China’s You Hao of the competition Sunday. “Sure we face the challenge from Japan, because it’s been the case every year that we are close to each other, but it’s up to the finals.”

Although encouraging, their swap in qualifying position did not fill the Japanese team with premature confidence. They’ve been here before.

In the 2011 worlds, Japan qualified first and China third. The Chinese still won. Last year, China and Japan went 1-2 in qualifying. After looking like they had won the meet, the Japanese saw China finish with a monster high bar routine that secured gold again, this time by .100 points.
Japan’s runner-up finishes to China have come by an average of 3.261 points since 2006, so this team might be as close as the country has had to ending China’s dominance.

“We were focused only on our own performance,” said Uchimura. “None of us even put our eyes on the screen and looked at the scores. After the competition, we looked at the scores and were surprised that we were higher than China.”

In these worlds, China overcame a rough start on pommel horse, posting top scores on still rings and parallel bars, where they had five scores above 15. The errors weren’t concerning to Zhang Chenglong, who had China’s highest score on high bar.

“They are not any issue to worry about. They are exceptions, not problems,” Zhang said. “As for Japan, I think they are just like us - both teams have some lapse here and there, but all we need to do is to perform as normal, because there won’t be huge difference at the finals.”

Japan, meanwhile, had the top scores of the day on vault, high bar and floor.

Uchimura has been almost as reliably dominant as these teams. The defending Olympic champion scored 90.564 to place first in the all-around. 
He topped 15 on four events, but he posted his lowest score of the day on floor. In a chilly arena, Uchimura put his jacket and pants back on for about a 10-minute delay as the judges scored Naoto Hayasaka’s routine.

“I was waiting so long,” said Uchimura. “The first part of the routine I felt fine but the second half, my body was so cold I couldn’t move as expected.”

Uchimura seemed to have injured his head, rubbing it and doubling over as he walked off. Afterward, he said he had injured his neck rolling out of a tumbling pass but was OK. That’s a good sign for Japan, which hopes to finally unseat its biggest rival.

“I still prefer the team gold medal to the all-around gold medal,” Uchimura said. “It’s my strong wish to win the team gold.”

To be sure, there are other competitive teams in the field. Great Britain continued its post-London progression by finishing third. The U.S. men – albeit without three of their best gymnasts – compete on Monday.

But until the rest of the gymnastics world shows it can hang with the two Asian powerhouses, just don’t count on a team besides China or Japan standing atop the podium.

PHOTOS: World championships