Sporting Life - Summer Olympics - Beijing 2008

China upset the world champions America with a dominant gymnastics display to storm to their first ever women's team competition Olympic gold.

The Olympic hosts narrowly lost out to the Americans at the World Championships, but as Team USA's performance was riddled with errors, the Chinese kept their heads to win by a giant margin in gymnastic terms of two points.

China scored 188.9 points to defeat the American team by 2.375 points, leaving Athens gold medallists Romania with the bronze.

Fall

America's Alicia Sacramone was the unfortunate gymnast who made bad errors on both balance beam and on the floor which ultimately cost them the chance of gold.

China did have their own problems with a big tumble from Cheng Fei off the balance beam but they recovered enough and still had plenty in hand by the end.

"We really worked and we were well prepared but unfortunately we made two mistakes and you cannot win gold with two mistakes," said U.S. team co-ordinator Martha Karolyi.

The win made it a double after the men's triumph, and the crowd inside the National Indoor Stadium went wild throughout the competition as China excelled.

Both team were locked together with only just over a point separating them at the beam - where China's big star Cheng produced a rare gaff when falling off.

"I was still very calm, I knew I was going to have to do more to compensate for what I did wrong," she said.

Let off

Amazingly though, the 20-year-old got away with it as America then needed three clear rounds to move ahead but first one up Sacramone fell off as she mounted the apparatus.

As the dream of gold slipped away from America, Sacramone then tried too hard on the floor, which she won the 2005 world title on, falling over when attempting a complicated tumble.

After Sacramone's horror show, Cheng then later stepped up and was able to achieve her redemption by nailing her final floor tumble to confirm their gold.