"All our gymnasts are excellent. We have hit our first target in spite of some small flaws by sending those hopeful through to finals," said Zhang Peiwen, head of Chinese delegation.

    "The young gymnasts are very good, even the debutant, and they presented very consistent performance all through the qualifiers. Zou Kai (18) debuted to take third in floor exercise; Chen Yibing (22) leads in rings; Xiao Qin (21) takes the first place in pommel horse, added with a few second or third finishers, so everything goes as we expected," added Zhang.

    U.S. sent out a complete young contingent of untested gymnasts by stripping of all its stars from the silver-medal team of the Athens Olympics. But even brothers of Hamm here couldn't salvage the fall of U.S. who were so far away trailing.

    America's national champion, Sasha Artemev, started poorly on the floor, struggling early to push to a handstand. He nearly fell off the parallel bars which he called a foolish mistake and then he did fall off the high bar during his mount. Elsewhere, Jonathan Horton fell twice from the high bar to go with another mistake on parallel bars.

    Germany (361.075) came up in the last moment to extrude Spain out of the top eight with a sixth-place finish behind Romania (364.325) and Canada (361.975). Switzerland (259.200) registered a place in final attributing to a relatively flawless qualifier in seventh. Belarus (359.175) notched the last spot leading to finals. Enditem