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Yang: Olympic champion
Men's individual all-around:
Gold: Yang Wei (Chn) 94.575 points
Silver: Kohei Uchimura (Jpn) 91.975
Bronze: Benoit Caranobe (Fra) 91.925
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China's Yang Wei completed his Olympic redemption bid by steaming away with the men's all-round gymnastics competition in front of an elated home crowd in Beijing.
Yang is the current two-time defending world champion but Olympic gold has just eluded his grasp during the past two Games.
This time though Yang made no mistakes as he delighted the crowd and the judges with a superb all-round display and the gold medal was never in doubt.
Despite a five-minute wait at the end of his final routine on the high bar, everyone inside the National Indoor Stadium knew Yang had the title and when his score did finally appear it confirmed his golden dream had come true.
"Today was perfect," Yang said. "I felt tired before the competition, but after it I feel relaxed."
Points
Home favourite Yang ended up with 94.575 points and some three points in front of Japan's Kohei Uchimura, while Frenchman Benoit Caranobe came out of nowhere to claim bronze despite qualifying for the final in last place.
After finishing second behind Alexei Nemov in Sydney 2000, Yang had a nightmare in Athens four years ago when a fall off the high bar saw him also fall out of the medal positions.
That mistake has been played over in Yang's mind for four long years, but in Beijing with an adoring home crowd behind him all the way he clinched the Olympic gold he has been dreaming of.
The 28-year-old has seven World Championship titles and an Olympic team gold both from Beijing and Sydney, but the individual gong was the one he craved.
Yang was down in eighth after his displays on the floor and pommel horse, but he fired himself up the standings into second after a fine outing on the rings with a score of 16.625.
Vault
A brilliant 16.55 on the vault had the 18,000 home fans on their feet, while a 16.1 on the parallel bars extended his advantage to a huge gap of 2.5 points and the gold then looked all-but won.
Needing just a score of 12.175 on the high bar to pocket his sought-after gold medal, Yang played it safe but still scored 14.775, eventually after a long wait for the scorers, to claim the title.
Great Britain's Daniel Keatings did achieve the best pommel horse score of the competition of 15.700, but that could not help him finish higher than 20th in the final.
