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World Gymnastics Championships

Williams claims vault gold as Hong fluffs landings

LONDON: North Korea’s Olympic champion Hong Un-Jong disappointed in the women’s individual vault final at the World Gymnastics Championships on Saturday as Kayla Williams of the United States claimed gold.

Hong fell on landing in both her attempts at London’s 02 Arena to cost herself any chance of a medal. Williams, who was first in qualifying, took full advantage by nailing both her landings and maintaining great height and form in her vaults to sweep to gold with a score of 15.087 points.

It was an impressive performance from the 16-year-old, who only recently started competing at elite level. European champion Ariella Kaeslin of Switzerland earned silver with France’s Youna Dufournet taking bronze. Hong, despite her foibles, came fourth, mainly due to the difficulty of her attempts.

Earlier, Marian Dragulescu proved too hot for Olympic champion Zou Kai as the Romanian claimed his fourth world individual floor title. China’s Zou opened the floor final with an excellent routine but 28-year-old Dragulescu, who has just come out of retirement, overhauled him by 0.025 points to win gold. Dragulescu won floor gold in the 2001, 2002 and 2006 world championships, while he is also a three-time world champion on the vault.

Zou, a national hero in China after his three Olympic titles in Beijing last year, grabbed silver and Israel’s Alexander Shatilov picked up the bronze medal. Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, who won the men’s all-round gold medal here on Thursday, made a couple of errors in his performance - which was packed full of twists as normal - and could only finish fourth, 0.100 pts behind Shatilov. Another Japanese, Makoto Okiguchi, was fifth. afp

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