China highlighted the first day of the men's qualification, taking the lead in front of Japan and Russia at the 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on Monday.

The world champion team collected an awesome 374.275 points in all and enjoyed a considerable edge over title-contenders Japan. Russia was a temporary third with 362.175.

Following teams France and Belarus maintain the hopes of reaching the team final as the qualification still have four subdivisions to go.

In the all-around rankings, last year's world champion Yang Wei is currently on the 1st position in 93.925 ahead of two Japanese gymnasts Hiroyuki Tomita and Hisashi Mizutori.

China, seeking to defend their team gold medal, arrived at the venue very late as the shuttle bus had problems in traffic.

But they started well on vault where they received scores between 15.275 and 16.500 points.

The best competitor was Yang Wei who presented a Kasamatsu 2/1 twist and his 16.500 was the highest score on the apparatus.

The Chinese fireworks of gymnastics continued on parallel bars but high bar was a different case.

Liang Fuliang started with a fall and also the following gymnasts had insecurities. It looked a bit like the late arrival of their shuttle bus and the lack of time for the warm-up might have caused these problems. Also on floor mistakes and staggering were seen and Yang Wei even had a fall in his routine.

On pommel horse and rings, it then again went perfect for the Chinese team. Appreciative cheers from the audience were heard during the great routine of Xiao Qin for which he received the score of 16.275. On rings Chen Yibing reached really impressive 16.600 points.

Belarus also competed well with Dzmitry Savitski receiving their highest score of 16.275 in vault, sitting fifth in 356.675 after subdivision four of the eight.

Earlier in the morning, all-around experts Japanese also showed a great competition with all the routines remaining around 15.1 points in average.

Last year's all-around silver medalist Hiroyuki Tomita showed a thrilling performance on high bar including a Kolman and a double-double dismount for which he got 15.300 points.

On parallel bars his routine was even more remarkable including five double somersaults. The score for it was a well-deserved 16.000.

With performances on the other apparatus also going well, he is a definite contender for the all-around title on Friday.

Russia had bad luck with injuries right on the first apparatus but fought back through the rest of their competition.

Both Anton Golotsutskov and Nikolai Kriukov injured themselves starting with vault. Although they were quite handicapped by these injuries the Russian team needed them to continue, considering that their reserve gymnast on five apparatus Alexander Safoshkin is an explicit rings specialist only.

Golotsutskov gave up competing on high bar after saluting the judges, which meant a 0.00 score for Russia. Kriukov however competed and got 14.975.

The same happened on floor, where Kriukov received zero and Golotsutskov had to compete but ended his routine with a simple layout due to the injury, receiving 12.375 only.

The men's qualification continues on Tuesday with subdivisions 5-8 which include overall 12 teams and various individual competitors. The decision about which teams will qualify for the Olympics will only be made after the end of the last subdivision in the evening.

(Xinhua News Agency September 4, 2007)