Chinese gymnasts set higher goals after Rio under-performance

(L-R) Deng Shudi, Lin Chaopan, Liu Yang, You Hao, and Chenglong on the podium with their bronze medals after the men's team final in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on August 8. [Photo/Agencies]

RIO DE JANERIO - Gymnastics, an event long dominated by China, may not contribute any gold medals to the country this year due to athletes' stumbles as well as stringent referee results. However, Chinese gymnasts have decided to brush the unfair treatment under the carpet and practice harder in the future.

During the past 10 days, Chinese gymnasts pitifully lost every single gold medal. For example, China's Li Dan won third place at the back-to-back trampoline on August 12, while 2008 Olympic champion He Wenna took the fourth spot, losing to Canada's Rosannagh Maclennan.

Shang Chunsong, leader of the Chinese gymnastic squad, scored 58.032, losing out to bronze medalist Aliya Mustafina from Russia who finished with 58.665 at women's individual all-around on August 11. Chinese gymnasts only won a bronze medal at women's team gymnastics.

2014 world champion Liu Yang of China finished fourth and his teammate You Hao ranked sixth in the final of men's rings on August 15. Fan Yilin ranked sixth in the women's balance beam on the same day.

The last hope is You Hao and Deng Shudi's men's parallel bars as well as Wang Yan's women's floor event on Tuesday. However, as the two programs are not China's favorite, the Chinese team may witness an Olympics without any gold medal for the first time.

A good thing is that the young athletes can view the results objectively and pull their forces together and start afresh.

"As the first performer, I did not master the rhythm well. The movement was too hard for me," said You Hao after the match. "I am still not ready for a gold medal at the rings event, and I just played my normal level," admitted the gymnast frankly.

"My aim was to win a gold medal. So the result was disappointing," said the 21-year-old Liu Yang, who cried in the mixed zone. "The only mistake happened on the dismount and that's because I didn't have any energy left," he said.

Greek gymnast Eleftherios Petrounias won a super high performance points at 9.2 and claimed the title with an overall 16.0 points. "I wish I could have done better after seeing the high score of Petrounias," said Liu, "however, things just went the other way and I broke my own rhythm at the end."

Although Liu had some resentment towards the unfair scoring of the referees, Liu blamed himself for losing the games.

"I felt very well physically and emotionally before the match, so the result can only be attributed to my own errors," said Liu.

"I will keep practicing and I am looking forward to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020," Liu told the reporter.

"Four of our team members are freshmen to the Olympics. Although we have not achieved the ideal goal, we worked very hard as a team," said Liu. "We will keep low profile and practice harder after going back to China. The team is lack of experience in facing the new ground, environment, and the audience, and we will do better for the next time," said the gymnast confidently.