Chinese world champion Yang Wei beat Japanese duo Hisashi Mizutori and Hiroyuki Tomita to lift gymnastics men's all-around title at the Doha Asian Games on Monday.

Yang Wei scored 95.500 points against 93.400 points by Hisashi Mizutori and Yang's arch rival Hiroyuki Tomita followed in third with 93.250.

Yang Wei and Hiroyuki Tomita finished first and second in all-around at the Aarhus world championships on October in Denmark. Yang won his first individual world title in Aarhus in all-round.

In today's all-round duel, Yang Wei came forward over Tomita after the third rotation of rings by grabbing 16.550 points in the apparatus and never surrendered his lead from then on.

Yang even outperformed his teammate Chen Yibing, the rings world champion at Aarhus, on Chen's specialty, who recorded a mark of 16.500.

After three rotations, Yang, Tomita and Chen ranked the top three positions in scores of 47.200, 46.700 and 46.500. Yang just consolidated his margin by vaulting 16.600 points in the fourth rotation. Tomita's costly vault error for landing on his rear forfeited his chance of pressing hard on Yang, taking in just 15.450 points.

China's Chen came up with 16.300 to push Tomita to the third place by taking the advantage of Tomita's mistake with only parallel bars and high bar left.

Yang geared up to further extend his lead by scoring 16.300 points, highest on parallel bars, while error-prone Tomita staggered on landing and had to settle with a tied third place with his teammate Hisashi Mizutori before the last high bar competition.

Yang went into the high bar with a edge of 2.450 points over Tomita and Mizutori and a low difficulty routine is enough to ensure the all-around the gold. Mizutori collected best 15.750 points in high bar and finished second in total, while Yang showcased a fluent moves and earned 15.400 points to defend his all-around title at Asiad.

"I realized the gold came to me when I landed on the cushion from the high bar. I am relaxed mentally, but I can feel the fatigue physically after the event," said Yang Wei.

"I think Tomita is my arch rival until I retire after 2008 Beijing Olympics. The victory brings me a lot of confidence for my future career.

"I respect Tomita a lot and I think he is a very persistent gymnast.

"I will try to become the most prolific athlete at the Doha Asian Games and try to win two more gold medals in the apparatus competitions."

Tomita spilt positive appraisal for Yang. "He is a very powerful competitor for me. He can perform his skill out with high stability."

"He can consistently increase his routines both in accuracy and difficulty, and he is a very overwhelming gymnast in the world," said Tomita.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2006)