China lose men's world team title for first time in 12 years

China's dominance in the men's team event since 2003 came to a shocking end as they finished a distant third place at the gymnastics world championships here on Wednesday.

Japan, the silver medalists in the last four worlds, won their first title in 37 years after surviving a last-moment scare in the horizontal bar, where both Yusuke Tanaka and five-time world all-around champion Kohei Uchimura fell off the apparatus.

China, who have won six straight title since 2003, registered their worst performance in 12 years with 269.959 points.

Japan collected a total of 270.818 points for the title. Britain shocked the field by winning the silver with 270.345 points, their first world championships medal in history.

China, who won 10 out of 11 world men's team titles since 1994, never looked like a true contender for the title on Wednesday until their speciality event of horizontal bar.

Zhang Chenglong, whose near-flawless routine on the horizontal bar helped China win their sixth straight title last year, made a mistake in their first discipline of floor exercise. World debutant Xiao Ruoteng then fell off the pommel horse.

After the first two events, China came in seventh, more than six points behind leaders Japan, led by Uchimura and floor exercise expert Shirai Kenzo.

China, who were beaten to the second by Japan in the qualifications, managed to narrow the gap to 2.093 points and moved to the third place after the fifth discipline of parallel bars, in which Deng Shudi scored a stunning 16.066 points.

After successful routines from former world champion Lin Chaopan and Zhang, China moved to the top of the standings and had to wait for the results of Japan, Britain and the United States.

Max Whitlock earned 15.766 to help Britain overtake the Chinese but Uchimura still got 14.466 points to seal the victory for Japan. Endit