Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Olympic gymnastics: bronze for GB as Japan win silver on appeal


Great Britain's men won an astonishing Olympic bronze medal in the gymnastics team final - having originally taken silver before a Japanese appeal.
Louis Smith, Sam Oldham, Kristian Thomas, Max Whitlock and Dan Purvis sealed GB men's first Olympic team medal since a bronze in 1912.
China cruised to gold, with GB second, as the medal prospects of the United States and Germany disintegrated.
Japan, initially placed in fourth, moved up to second after an appeal.
They were unhappy with the pommel horse score awarded to Kohei Uchimura and were elevated above Britain, after lengthy deliberation by the officials, with Ukraine missing out on a bronze medal in the process.
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Great Britain
Olympic gymnastics: Bronze in team final is still unbelievable - GB men
The result is beyond the expectations of the British team, even though they qualified for the final in third place and knew they had the ability to challenge for a medal.
"For all these guys, their first Olympic Games, to get a medal is unbelievable," Smith told BBC Sport. "Silver? Bronze? It doesn't matter, we enjoyed it, it was fantastic."
Thomas added: "It's an Olympic medal at the end of the day, it's what dreams are made of. All I could think about was winning an Olympic medal when I was younger.
"Silver would've been nice but I couldn't complain at all right now. We're in London, it's once in a lifetime and we've made the most of it."
Uchimura, whose appeal denied Britain the silver, told reporters through an interpreter: "I feel sorry [for the British]. It's strange to say I feel sorry for them, though. This is the scoring system so I shouldn't feel sorry. This is just the score."
His appeal centred on whether he had been correctly rewarded for a partially botched dismount in his pommel horse routine. The three-time world champion's score was upgraded by 0.7 marks, enough to take Japan past Britain.
Before the final, not many would talk in more than hushed tones of a bronze medal, let alone of beating Japan. So the 10 minutes spent in silver-medal position, before Japan's successful appeal, were breathtaking as a stunned and elated audience tried to take in the scale of the British men's achievement.

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