Russia seize first men's team gold as China slip at the end

Russia grabbed the men's team gold at the World gymnastics championships here after China's Sun Wei fell off the high bars in the closing routines on Wednesday.

Russia finished with a huge score of 261.726, with China second on 260.729. Japan were third, just over 2.5 behind China but more than 3.5 ahead of the United States. Great Britain was fifth.

It was Russia's first world team title, although the Soviet Union collected the last of its eight golds in 1991.

Less than a year before the Tokyo Olympics, Russia also took revenge for a narrow defeat at last year's worlds in Doha, when China won by 0.049 of a point.

China, Russia and Japan had exchanged the lead as the teams rotated through the six different elements.

China seemed to have seized control on their penultimate challenge, the parallel bars.

Their third and final man on the apparatus, Zou Jingyuan, delivered an imaginative and technically perfect routine to score a huge 16.383, by far the highest mark by any man in any ...