It was a great fight from the team who pushed hard throughout.
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The team of Max Whitlock, Louis Smith MBE, Brinn Bevan, Nile Wilson and Thomas finished with a total of 268.670 to place fifth behind China (270.461), the United States of America (270.405), Russian Federation (269.612) and Japan (269.294) to successfully make the team final, which will take place this evening.
Smith said: “Exuding confidence affects a lot of things – it affects my confidence, the team’s confidence, the judges”. It wasn’t the best we could ever do, and some of the scores were lower than we usually get, but that’s the way sport is.
In the final scheme of things Smith’s stumble hardly mattered – he would have had to have significantly bettered the score with which Whitlock had claimed the world title a year ago to give the Britons any chance of re-entering the top three. The team have pulled together really well and I’m really pleased to come up first in the floor and pommel.
Russian Federation claimed the silver with China taking the bronze.
“We all felt good”. ‘I definitely heard her cheering louder than anyone else’. “Hopefully I’ll be in those finals”, Whitlock told reporters.
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Whitlock and Bevan will seek to improve their poor scores on the vault after they appeared to be distracted by a horror injury to French gymnast Samir Ait Said, whose left leg snapped on landing from the vault. ‘I think it’s important when things like that happen to stay focused, because gymnastics can change in a split second, it’s a very risky sport.
