He needn’t have been. The muscular Chinese barani. Then, on pommels, he slithered off after a
gymnast had been spectacular on his first five Russian-on-one-pommel sequence. So much for a
events, highlighted by leading scores on pommels fight to the finish between the last two world
( 15.550), rings ( 16.400) and parallel bars ( 16.350). champs.
Each of those sets was filled with about as much dif- “I felt sorry for Tomita,” Hambüchen said.
ficulty as humanly possible (kip-Maltese-inverted, “When we were walking in, I asked him, ‘Are you
whippet-Maltese-press planche and layout double- as tired as I am?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”
double on rings; front uprise-double tuck and piked By contrast, Yang looked energized—and out of
Belle on p-bars). Like his Chinese team the day reach. Far more interesting was the battle for silver
before, Yang simply did more big skills than anyone and bronze. And with vault scores soaring well
else (Lopez on vault, for the second-highest score above the other five events, it was pointless to
there), and he never faltered u ntil that final flub, watch the running standings until everyone had fin-which had no effect on the ished that event.
end result.
The meet had the potential “I felt sorry for After the fourth rota-
tion, when all the finalists
to be much closer, with the Tomita,” Ham- had vaulted, Russia’s
top six qualifiers in one group.
And on the first four events, büchen said. Maxim Devyatovsky was in
second place, almost two
Yang followed Tomita, the “I asked him, points behind Yang. That’s
2005 world champion. But when he fell from grace, at
Tomita took the pressure off ‘Are you as least in the eyes of his fed-
his foe right out of the gate.
On floor, he aborted one tired as I am?’” eration. Devyatovsky, who
won the 2007 Europeans,
bounding pass and fell on a mounted parallel bars with
double-twisting front to a peach, peach-half, giant
to piked Belle, but the release skill finished below
the bars. Devyatovsky crashed awkwardly onto the
mat, then stood up and checked his left foot to see
if he was really injured. He walked to the chalk bin
and re-chalked, strode back to the apparatus, then
shook his head, signaled to the judge and limped off
the podium. The slender Russian later said he with-
drew because a medal was no longer possible.
Thinking Devyatovsky should have finished the
meet anyway, the Russian federation suspended
him through the end of the year.
Devyatovsky’s self-imposed exit opened the door
for other gymnasts to reach the podium. Yang’s
teammate Liang Fuliang might have creeped into
the medals, but he nearly fell on a
3⁄4-Bailie to handstand dismount from pommels in rotation two.
That, coupled with his 2. 3 deficit to Yang’s total A-score, left the lanky Liang in eighth. In the end, he
was resigned to the fact that a spot on the podium
had been out of reach. “I just tried to do my routines and follow Yang,” he said. “I know that, now,
I don’t have the ability to get a medal.”
Others did, and it was there for the taking. And
a certain crowd favorite—the guy who the day
before had led Germany to its first team medal
