体坛新闻：Yang wins all-around at China's gym championship

SHANGHAI - Yang Wei from Hubei province clinched the men's individual all-around title at Chinese national gymnastics championship here on Tuesday.

Yang, 29, the triple world champion at Aarhus gymnastic worlds 2006, edged out Chen Yibing from Tianjin municipality to score a total of 93.40 points.

Gold medalist Yang Wei (C) , a triple World Champion gold winner, runner-up Chen Yibing (L) and bronze winner Teng Haibin pose with their medals at the national gymnastics championship June 13, 2007. [Xinhua]

Yang sustained his performance in Aarhus to dominate in most of the disciplines, establishing a 1.75 points advantage over Chen before the last round. Then he picked an less challenging routine in the final apparatus, high bar, to wrap up his title with ease.

Yang earned the highest score in parallel bars with 16.05 and second highest in rings with 16.66.

Chen, the rings winner in Aarhus gymnastic worlds, scored 16.900 points in the rings to lead the apparatus.

Yang made flawless routines in all the disciplines to be crowned.

Chen, nicknamed "king of rings" took the silver with 91.950. Teng Haibin, the pommel horse champion at Athens Olympic Games, won the bronze for the Beijing delegation with 91.35 points

Feng Jing, the 2001 all-around world champion from Guangdong, finished fourth with 91.250 points.

"I have to take each match so serious as I am playing in the Olympic Games. I need to avoid any blunder in the all-around for no one can afford to fall down even for once," said Yang Wei.

Huang Yubin, the head coach of the national team, was quite satisfied with his gymnasts.

"I am very happy with their performances today. It's almost a success rate of 100 percent. We made serial mistakes last month at the national champions tournament, but it turned out to be a great improvement in stability this time," said Huang.

"It's a contradiction between difficulty and stability. Without difficulty, you can not get competitive, but high difficulty will result in less stability. How can you maintain a balance between them, that's to practice. Practice makes perfect," added Huang.

The national championship is going through from June 9 to 18, which is functioning as a trial for a squad to contend the Beijing Olympic Games and World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, on September.