Japan’s Kohei Uchimura started the evening with a brilliant 15.625 floor routine, and after he turned in a 14.90 on pommel horse, it became a foregone conclusion that the World title was all his.  Uchimura blitzed the field of twenty-four to win his first world men’s gymnastics all-around championship with a big score of 91.50.  His nearest competitor was Great Britain’s Daniel Keatings, who finished a staggering 2.575 points behind.  Uchimura hit on all six events in a dominant display of consistency, style and confidence.  He was clearly in a world of his own.

Although American Tim McNeill fell short of a medal, the world stage rookie scored a respectable 87.125 for a laudable 7th-place finish.  McNeill flirted with a top five placing, and he hit on all six, but didn’t have enough in his arsenal to pull it off on parallel bars and high bar.  He had a nice clean 15.00 on pommel horse to give him some incentive to medal in Saturday’s event final.

Jonathan Horton had a meet reminiscent of David Sender’s farewell meet at VISAs.  Horton started out with a fall on his floor mount (13.775), and things didn’t get any better with another fall on pommel horse (11.10).  He regrouped on rings, vault and parallel bars, but took another tumble doing a Kolman on high bar (13.65).  Horton ended up in a disappointing 17th place, but there is no doubt he’ll use this experience to fire-up his competitive juices in 2010.  In the meantime, look for for Horton to pull out all the stops in the high bar final on Sunday.

Silver medal winner Keatings had the meet of his life in front of his home crowd.  Competing in his first World Championships, the 19-year-old proved he has what it takes to contend for a medal in 2012, again in front of a home crowd.  Keatings easily had the highest score of the evening on pommel horse (15.50), and showed a lot of poise and precision on all the other events.

Russia’s Yury Ryazanov took the bronze with a respectable 88.40, while Japan’s Kazuhito Tanaka (88.30) and Russia’s Maxim Devyatovskiy claimed 4th and 5th places, respectively.

From a competitive standpoint, the event finals are shaping up to provide much more fireworks than the all-around session.  You’ll have to wake up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to watch all the action at Universal Sports. The action commences on both days at 7:55am EDT.

Here are the top 10 all-arounders:

1. Kohei Uchimura (JPN) – 91.50
2. Daniel Keatings (GBR) – 88.925
3. Yury Ryazanov (RUS) – 88.40
4. Kazuhito Tanaka (JPN) – 88.30
5. Maxim Devyatovskiy (RUS) – 87.475
6. Kristian Thomas (GBR) – 87.35
7. Tim McNeill (USA) – 87.15
8. Benoit Caranobe (FRA) – 86.175
9. Mykola Kuksenkov (UKR) – 86.125
10. Enrico Pozzo (ITA) – 86.10

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