All-around gymnastics gold goes to Japan

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LONDON, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- Kohei Uchimura of Japan bounced back from controversy earlier in the Olympics Wednesday to earn the gold medal in the men's gymnastics all-around.

American Danell Leyva, seemingly headed for a big disappointment, rallied in his final two exercises to grab the bronze.

In a strange all-around final, China, the champions in the team competition, did not have a single gymnast on the floor. The Chinese had such a poor qualifying effort Saturday that they did not put anyone among the top 24 individual qualifiers for the all-around.

Nevertheless, China was able to finish qualifying sixth as a team and then won first place in that competition Monday.

Without any of the Chinese around and with Leyva having a poor start to his night, the gold medal was there for the taking and Uchimura was the one who took it.

He went through some furor in the team event Monday when his score was changed on the pommel horse, allowing Japan to move in front of Britain for a silver medal.

This time there was no dispute. His consistency gave him a final score of 92.690. He had the best score of any of the 24 finalists in the vault and the second best in three of the other five exercises.

Marcel Nguyen of Germany was second at 91.030, giving his country its first medal in this event since the 1936 Games hosted by Berlin.

Leyva, who led individual qualifying Saturday and then suffered with the other Americans when they finished fifth in the team event, looked to be out of medal contention through four exercises Wednesday.

He then turned in the best performance of the finals on both the parallel bars and horizontal bar to grab the bronze. He averaged 14.79 on the opening four apparatus before turning in scores of 15.833 and 15.700 on the last two.