Canada posted its best-ever result while China made it clear they're back, winning the men's team event at the world gymnastics championship Tuesday with a comeback sparked by Yang Wei.
In seventh place out of eight teams after an atrocious opening two rotations, China was nearly perfect down the stretch, save for a meaningless fall on the last high bar routine.
The team that won worlds in 1999 and 2003 and the Olympics in 2000 only to fall to a surprisingly bad fifth place at the Athens Olympics finished with 277.775 points.
That was 2.375 more than Russia, which won a surprising silver.
Defending Olympic champion Japan, expected to be part of a two-team show with China, finished third _ a stunning disappointment punctuated by defending all-around champion Hiroyuki Tomita's fall off the high bar at the end.
Canada finished sixth with 270.350 points, dropping one spot from its qualifying position over the weekend. Canada's best previous result in the men's team event was ninth in 2003.
The team comprised Calgarians Kyle Shewfelt, Adam Wong and Nathan Gafuik, Ken Ikeda of Abbotsford, B.C., David Kikuchi of Halifax and Brandon O'Neill of Edmonton.
China has long been known as a team with big talent, but not always able to capitalize on the biggest stages, a la Athens two years ago. Everything is under an even brighter spotlight in the 22 months leading to the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.
And when Yang, the all-around silver medallist at Sydney and in 2003, opened the day with a fall on the floor, then Chen Yibing and Zou Kai followed with big breaks on pommel horse, things were not going according to plan.
Things picked up on vault, where all three gymnasts landed and scored higher than 16, and progressed from there.
Of course, no men's team meet is fully decided until the high bar is over. And under the format in place _ three gymnasts go and all three scores count _ anything can happen.
But Tomita's fall, which brought gasps from the crowd, knocked Japan completely out.
China followed and the first two athletes sealed the meet.
Feng Jing cruised through his twirls around the bar, executed his only release-and-catch move cleanly and landed square on both feet. Same with Xiao Qin. Zou closed the day and fell, which left a sliver of hope for Russia, but Dimitri Gogotov would have needed more than 17 points and he got 14.425 on the final routine of the night.
Still, it was a happy day for the Russians, who were thought to be contenders for a possible bronze, but won silver for their first world team medal since 1999.
