Host gymnast Teng Haibin shrugged off the Athens ghost to win a 9th straight Asiad men's all-around title for China in Guangzhou on Monday.

The 25-year-old veteran, keyman in China's Olympic fiasco in 2004, accumulated 91.100 points on all six apparatuses to edge his compatriot Lv Bo by 1.250. The bronze medal went to Japanese Hisashi Mizutori in 89.700.

After a six-year wait, Teng returned to light at the last month's world championship in Rotterdam where he also had a faulty 11th-place performance in all-around.

While doubts surfaced that the Athens ghost was still haunting him, he proved himself with almost flawless routines on home turf.

"It's not easy," said Teng, "It's a new start. That gold gave me much confidence to look to next year's world championship and 2012 Olympics."

Teng topped the fields on parallel bars and vault, on which he won a Olympic gold in 2004. He is also a favourite for the vault title on Tuesday.

He had a notably solid landing on each apparatus, which he explained as key point for victory.

"Our head coach Huang Yubin asked us to train particularly on landing before the matches and we have prepared that for the past three days. Landing is very important and one slip might cost 0.3 for a competitor."

Lv and Mizutori, 30, were both good but the lack of steadiness and small errors made their maneuvers secondary to Teng.

Hoping for a better finish, Mizutori tried everything he could in the last rotation of high bar. His acrobatic moves full of amazing flying elements earned ovation from spectators and a highest 15.650.

He almost made it but a 0.15-point difference left him a close third.

Kim Soo Myun from South Korea placed third after four exercises but a blunder on parallel bars cost him a podium finish.

Takuya Nakase, pre-match title contender, made mistakes again as he did in qualifying. A fall off the pommel horse virtually denied him a medal although he later grabbed a best-of-day score of 16.000 on vault.

Uzbekistan's Anton Fokin, fourth in qualifying, miscalculated his steps before vaulting and gave up attempt, for which the judges gave him 0.

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