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The sleeping giant of gymnastics has come alive at a very interesting time.

China won two more gold medals at the world championships on Saturday to close the meet with eight. That's more than half the 14 golds awarded over nine days in Denmark - a record, and a staggering display of dominance for the upcoming host of the Olympics.

"China will hold the Olympic Games and the Chinese people have a passion for the games," said women's coach Lu Shanzhen, whose team won three of the eight golds. "There has been a great movement to push gymnastics in our country. There are great expectations and hopes."

Indeed, there are many reasons to be excited.

Men's all-around champion Yang Wei won his second individual gold medal of the week - this time on parallel bars - and Cheng Fei also got her second gold, adding the women's floor exercise to her victory on vault.

The medal haul was the kind that might have been expected from the Soviet and Romanian gymnastics dynasties of yesteryear. But now it's China, a country of 1.3 billion people that has always had the talent, but not the execution, to make this happen.

This was a program that suffered through an embarrassing Olympics in Athens, when the men finished fifth and the women seventh. Was that really only two years ago? It didn't seem like it this week.

"I wouldn't say I'm surprised," Yang said. "But it is a great number. I hope we can do this again in 2008."

Other winners on Saturday included Marian Dragulescu of Romania, who added a gold in vault to the one he took on floor the day before. Iryna Krasnianska of Ukraine won gold on beam and Australia's Philippe Rizzo won on high bar.

The real stars of this meet, however, were Yang and Cheng.

Yang is 26, a two-time runner-up in the all-around before this (once at worlds, once at the Olympics), and he sets the standard for his teammates.

"Yang Wei is a very good role model. There is still so much to learn from him," said Chen Yibing, who won gold on rings on Friday.

Cheng, meanwhile, is a sassy 18-year-old who jumps out of the gym, as was seen in her winning performances on vault and floor. If she can get better on the other two events, she could be the woman to beat two years from now.

"I've been asked about that several times," Cheng said of her absence from the all-around. "After I go home, I'll practice even harder to make sure I do it well."

China's surprising success is getting noticed in more than just gymnastics circles.

Jana Bieger of the United States came through with her second silver medal, adding one on floor to her second place in the all-around.

It was quite a nice surprise from a gymnast who was supposed to play a support role for the US team but wound up in the spotlight due to injuries to Chellsie Memmel and Nastia Liukin.

"When I came here, I was thinking, 'Do my routines, do the best I could,"' Bieger said. "I wasn't even thinking about a medal."

Bieger's surprising success aside, it was a less-than-satisfying trip for the Americans, who go home with five silvers from the women and one bronze from the men, but not a single gold from anyone for the first time since 1999.

Memmel was forced to withdraw from her all-around title defence due to a shoulder injury, while Liukin was limited to the team event and displayed an uneven bars defence.

Liukin was trounced by Tweddle on that apparatus and took silver, with Alicia Sacramone, failing to defend her floor title and winning silver on the vault behind Cheng.

Again it was Cheng who ended the final US title hope on the floor.

She scored 15.875 to push Bieger (15.550) into silver medal position. "I did the best I could," said Bieger, the most successful American after also winning silver in the all-around and team.

Ferrari, who single-handedly lifted Italy to fourth on the medals table, took her second bronze on Saturday, a day after her third on the uneven bars.

But she missed out on a medal on the beam as, like in the all-around final, she fell from that apparatus to finish sixth in an event won by Krasnianska.

Australia were third best as a result of 25-year-old Rizzo's gold and Prashanth Sellathurai's pommel horse silver on Friday.

Rizzo scored 16.125 to push defending champion Aljaz Pegan of Slovenia into silver-medal position, 15.900, with Greece's Vlasios Maras taking bronze.

Earlier Yang took parallel bars gold ahead of Tomita, who had to settle for joint silver with South Korea's Yoo Won Chul. Tomita also finished second in the all-around after losing his title to Yang.

Dragulescu, meanwhile, claimed his sixth world gold.

A day after winning his third world floor title the 26-year-old from Bucharest took his third vault gold with a combined 16.487 after two jumps.

(China Daily October 23, 2006)