China's gymnasts dominate men's individual all-around at Jakarta Asiad

JAKARTA - Chinese gymnasts dominated the men's individual all-around final at the Asian Games here on Monday, bringing home a gold and a bronze medal.

Lin Chaopan, the silver medallist of the event in the 2017 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Montreal, took the gold medal with 86.750 points, followed by Japan's Shogo Nonomura with 85.950 points.

Another Chinese gold medal hopeful Xiao Ruoteng, 22, who claimed the title in Montreal, finished third in his Asian Games debut with 85.550 points.

Lin presented equal strong performances in parallel bars, high bar, pommel horse and vault, propelling him to gold.

"I will never forget today. The gold medal means a lot to me because it's my first Asian Games gold. Now, I'm more confident. It's a great encouragement for me to compete for the World Championship later in autumn," said an excited Lin.

"Now, all my mind is on the team event next. Japan is very strong. I hope I will be relaxed and composed as today," he said.

Lin has suffered from injures after the Montreal World Championships. "I'm recovered and now I'm in good shape especially after the one-month summer training," he added.

Xiao, who took the lead in the first three rotations, however, failed to finish a handstand on pommel horse in time, which sent him down the rankings.

The Chinese team submitted an enquiry to judges and Xiao's score was then raised to 13.900 from 13.200 points, which is not good enough to bring him back to top yet.

A landing on one knee from vault jump brought him down further to finish the third, just 0.4 points behind Nonomura.

Despite missing out on the gold medal in such agonizing fashion, Xiao resolved to turn the setback into a positive and come back stronger.

"I prepared a pretty difficult routine of pommel horse and it's a bit risky when it came as the fourth rotation and I'm tired then," recalled Xiao.

"I thought I prepared pretty well for the competition, mentally and physically, but it's a different story on the stage. The mistake on pommel horse haunted me later on the rings and vault, I didn't quite feel myself," said Xiao.

"I had to go back to find out why it went wrong. We just have two years to go for the Tokyo Olympic Games after all."

Nonomura is satisfied with his performances on Monday though he will miss the World Championship this year.

"I was able to perform as planned. I served as the captain in the Universiade last year, but I could not put together the team. The feeling of pulling the team was strong this time. The best goal of Asian Games is to take a gold medal in the team event," he said.

"I know that China is a strong member. I am honored to be able to fight such opponents. I want to be able to keep up with them even a bit," he said.

According to the artistic gymnastics competition rules at this Asian Games, qualifications for team and apparatus finals, and individual all around finals have been merged into one single competition.

On team event, eight teams were qualified into the finals. China was ranked the first, followed by Japan and South Korea. The other five teams are Chinese Taipei, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Iran.

Japan did not send their top gymnasts here in preparation for the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Doha from late October to early November.

The women's event will start on Tuesday.