By Hiroki Noda,
Japan won the men's gymnastics team gold at the Paris Olympics on Monday, with a late mistake on the horizontal bar proving costly for the Chinese silver medalists.
Japan's team of Daiki Hashimoto, Kazuma Kaya, Wataru Tanigawa, Shinnosuke Oka and Takaaki Sugino scored a total of 259.594 points to put the team 0.532 clear of long-time rival China at Bercy Arena.
The United States took bronze with 257.793 points.
With one apparatus left to complete, the game appeared to be over between the two rivals as Japan trailed China by a whopping 3.267.
But Su Weide, China's second-to-last performer, fell from the horizontal bar twice, scoring only 11.600 after Sugino and Oka had 14.566 and 14.433, respectively, for Japan.
Japanese team leader Hashimoto then proved his mettle by delivering a near-perfect performance to score 14.566.
Two days earlier, Hashimoto missed out on qualifying for the final of his pet horizontal bar, on which he is the reigning Olympic champion.
"It was a scary situation. My performance was going to decide the color of our medal," said Hashimoto, who had fallen from the pommel horse earlier in the team final.
"As I prepared for my last performance, I heard chants of 'Nippon,' and that gave me a positive mindset. I took a little step on the landing, but it was unbelievable when I got a standing ovation from the crowd," the 22-year-old added.
"Winning team gold feels greater than individual gold as I can celebrate with teammates and so many other people."
The horizontal bar was the only apparatus in which Japan top scored.
Su's poor performance dropped his team's apparatus score to the seventh-highest in the eight-team final.
"Today has been a huge lesson for me," the 24-year-old said. "I feel very sorry for my teammates who have worked so hard, especially overcoming many injuries this cycle."
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