British men finish 10th at Gymnastics World Championships

TOKYO — The British men will have to take the long route to the London Olympics.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Britain's Kristian Thomas performs at the worlds. The British men took 10th and must go through another round of Olympic qualifying.

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China finished a surprising third in qualifying at the world gymnastics championships Monday night, the first time they’ve finished anywhere but first at a major competition since the 2004 Olympics. Still, it was enough to bump Britain’s men down to 10th place – and out of the running for the eight spots at next summer’s London Olympics that are available at the worlds.

Japan finished first in qualifying with 364.291 points, followed by the United States (361.583) and China (359.126). Germany, last year’s bronze medalists, were fourth and Russia fifth.

“Of course we want to get the best score,” Chen Yibing, who owns two gold medals from the Beijing Olympics and six from the world championships, said through a translator. “But it’s competition. It happens sometimes.”

At least the Chinese get a do-over in Tokyo, with team finals Wednesday night. Britain will now have to wait until the January test event at the O2 Arena to try and qualify for the London Olympics, something they – and everyone else – desperately wanted to avoid.

Britain has not qualified to send a full men’s team to an Olympics since 1992.

“We don’t really fancy canceling Christmas to work through the holidays and compete in the test event,” Louis Smith said. “But if that’s what we have to do, then we have to do it.”

And the British have no one to blame but themselves.

After making its best showing by finishing seventh at last year’s worlds, Britain melted down in spectacular fashion over its final three events. Daniel Keatings fell on both high bar and pommel horse, the event on which he won the European title in 2010, and Kristian Thomas made major errors. Britain had to count four scores of 13.633 or lower in the last three events.

Compare that to the Americans, who counted only one score below 14.3.

“It wasn’t exactly like it was technical errors, it was just flukey errors,” Keatings said, clearly exasperated with himself. “I can’t really explain what happened. But I’m annoyed it did happen.”

France and Russia both passed the British, knocking them them down to eighth place before China took the floor.