By sportswriter Zhang Rongfeng
BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- As time is running out
towards the Beijing Olympic Games, the "Queen of Vault" Cheng Fei decides to
drop her attempt on the women's individual all-around.
"As far as the all-around concerned, I have decided
to give it up," said Cheng, triple vault world champion in a row, here on the
gymnastics Olympic test on Wednesday. "The time leading to the Beijing Olympics
is not too much there and quite a few gymnasts in Chinese team are capable of
challenging the event, so I finally give it away."
Cheng, who pocketed up three golds in last year's
world championships, won the single gold medal for Chinese women at the
Stuttgart world championships on September.
She was just upgraded to captain the Chinese women
team this month and is regarded as the Chinese ace in women's rivalship in the
Beijing Olympics.
The 19-year-old Cheng is a favorite candidate for
Olympic glory not only in her signature apparatus -- vault, but the floor
exercise, in which she was crowned last year.
"I have a few apparatuses to shoot at, such as the
vault, floor exercise and women's team, so it's really demanding for me to
develop further on others," said Cheng.
Cheng's words is echoed soundly by the deeds at the
Stuttgart world championships. Cheng made errors both on beam and floor exercise
after making do with women's team silver.
At the gymnastic worlds, Cheng fell off the beam and
stumbled out of the bounds in floor dismount, which cost her the gold-winning
routine otherwise.
The most toilsome gymnasts in Stuttgart are China's
Yang Wei and Japan's Hisashi Tomita. Both have team's competition, men's
all-around, and individual finals, but it turned out to be ineffective for an
athlete to take up too many.
Yang managed to win the men's team title and went on
to claim the all-around, but it just consumed too much for him to finish his
reining parallel bars well. He tumbled in his very first action on handstand.
It just messed up for the 2005 world all-around
champion Tomita, who made a series of blunders and ended up without any
individual medal after the team silver.
If Cheng picks up the all-around, she needs to
strengthen the uneven bars. The new training program will inevitably take up
time allocated to her strongholds like vault, floor and even beam.
Abandoning wisely is a way of gaining. Of course, it
needs the checkout eight months later in the Beijing Olympics.