STUTTGART (Germany), Sept 4: Holders China recovered from some erratic performances to overtake Olympic gold medallists Japan in men’s qualifying at the world championships on Monday.

A late surge on the pommel horse and rings, helped by stunning efforts from apparatus champions Xiao Qin and Chen Yibing, allowed China to record a total of 374.275 points to lead Japan by 3.550.

Russia are a distant third after an abysmal session in which they had to compete with two limping gymnasts. With another day of qualifying to go, they are far from certain of being one of the eight teams that qualify for the final.

Also at stake is a place at next year’s Olympics for the top 12 teams. The Beijing 2008 hosts started on vault and collected the day’s highest total of scores, including three of more than 16 points.

All-round and parallel bars champion Yang Wei recovered from a minor fumble at the start of his parallel bars routine to execute a series of sharp handstands and fluid swings to capture the day’s highest score on the apparatus of 16.375.

They then started to wipe out their early advantage to end up trailing Japan with only the rings to go.

Liang Fuliang fell off the horizontal bar and the rest of the team struggled with their rotations and landings while on the floor Xiao received penalties for taking too long and sticking his arm outside the area.

Pommel horse champion Xiao clawed back ground on his best apparatus with 16.275 points before rings champion Chen demonstrated sublime control to earn the day’s highest score in any discipline of 16.600.

Yang leads the individual standings by 0.300 over Japan’s Hiroyuki Tomita, last year’s silver medallist.

Tomita had helped Japan gain the early lead with their consistent performances on all apparatus which included the top three scores on the horizontal bar.

There was no such optimism from last year’s silver medallists Russia after Nikolai Kryukov and Anton Golotsutskov were hurt on the team’s first apparatus, the vault.

Kryukov, the 1999 all-round champion, was limping heavily and nursing an ice pack on his left knee in between performances while Golotsutskov’s problems showed on the floor where he had to drop complex moves from his routine.

European all-round champion Maxim Deviatovski put in good performances to stand fourth in the individual standings but he said that might not be enough to help his team.—Reuters