The final countdown for the world championships started Saturday for the Greek men's team — and for teams from Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus — at a four-nation meet held at the "Ioannis Melissanidis" Sports Hall in Thessaloniki.

Vlasios Maras (Greece)

This one-day competition was the first one for the gymnasts after a summer break and it was a good chance for everybody to test their routines and their level of consistency, seven weeks before the world championships start in Rotterdam.

Romania looked significantly better as a team than it had done last April in the European Championships, and topped the competition with 353.650 points. Ovidiu Buidoso was the top all-arounder (87.300).

Romania lined up Marian Dragulescu, who had missed the Europeans in April due to an injured right foot. He has resumed training and is eager to retain his floor and vault world titles. Dragulescu showed some of his unique skills, although he didn't really push himself on floor exercise. In fact, he was rather overshadowed by teammate Flavius Koczi, who was stunning both on floor (15.850) and vault (16.550).

The Greek team members had reasons to be happy, too. The host team showed a great deal of consistency and had only one fall, finishing second with 350.000 points.

"This performance was even better than expected," Greek head coach Dimitris Raftis said. "We only had one fall and we stayed close to Romania in points, as we wanted to do. We have six weeks of hard work ahead of us, in order to improve."

Vlasios Maras executed very well his high bar routine (15.700), the same one that had got him the Europeans gold medal in Birmingham. He just made a small step while landing this time.

"I'm very pleased with my performance on high bar," said Maras, the five-time European champion on high bar. "Although I'm not in the best shape yet, I believe that I executed my routine in a way that would get me qualified to the final of any competition. In the remaining time, I will take care of the details, of the quality elements, so that my routine should be perfect in time for the world championships."

Vasilios Tsolakidis got a high note, too, on the fact that he premiered his brand-new parallel bars routine (14.900/6.5 Difficulty), which contains both skills internationally registered under his name: "Tsolakidis 1" (E Difficulty level) is a front uprise-Makuts and "Tsolakidis 2" (F Difficulty level) is a front front uprise-Diamidov-1 1/2.

"It was the first competition ever in which my parallel bars routine contained both 'Tsolakidis 1' and 'Tsolakidis 2' exercises," he said. "I started working on this just a few days ago, and the fact that I was able to execute it so soon in a competition is definitely a very good sign. My aim is to add another element, too, in order to raise the difficulty up to 6.7."

Eleftherios Kosmidis, on the other hand, couldn't hit his 6.8 routine in floor exercise, as he stumbled in the first diagonal, when trying a new element. Nevertheless, he stayed focused and hit the rest of his routine for 15.250.

"I couldn't execute well that new element in the beginning of my floor routine, but the rest of it was really good," he said. "In the upcoming meets before the world championships, I will aim to hit the entire routine in a flawless way."

Bulgaria finished in third place of the team competition with a 321.600 total, which wasn't really satisfactory. Junior Velislav Valchev, 17, was the top all-arounder in seventh place. However, they should become a different team altogether, once Jordan Jovtchev and Eddie Penev join them in Rotterdam.

2004 Olympic vault finalist Filip Yanev skipped the leg events after several surgeries, but earned the second-best score on high bar behind Maras.

"I'm not in the best shape, but I'm not too bad either," Yanev said. "I will not be doing floor and vault in Rotterdam. Maybe next year, if I am fit enough. This was the first competition for us, after quite a few months, because of the summer break. We made some silly mistakes and that cost us today. However, that's what these meets are for. We will try to learn from these mistakes and make things right in the world championships. Jordan will be there, too".

Cyprus, which really is focusing on the upcoming Commonwealth Games, performed just 22 routines in total and didn't rank officially in the team competition. Cyprus will only send Herodotos Georgallas to Rotterdam to compete on rings (14.550 on Saturday), since the island nation doesn't have team qualification aspirations.

Moreover, another six-member Greek team participated in the meet, too. Greece's "B" squad didn't complete the four routines-per-apparatus minimum either, so it didn't get a team ranking.

External Link: Hellenic Gymnastics Federation

2010 Greece-Bulgaria-Cyprus-Romania Men's Match
Aug. 28, Thessaloniki

Team			FX	PH	SR	VT	PB	HB	Total
1.	Romania		60.350	58.650	55.200	64.600	57.900	56.950	353.650
2.	Greece		60.100	53.800	55.900	62.400	58.200	59.600	350.000
3.	Bulgaria		50.000	51.700	50.650	59.200	53.600	56.450	321.600

Men's All-Around			FX	PH	SR	VT	PB	HB	Total
1.	Ovidiu Buidoso		14.700	14.100	13.750	15.550	14.550	14.650	87.300
2.	Christos Lympanovnos		14.600	13.700	14.200	15.400	14.600	14.550	87.050
3.	Michalis Doulkeridis		15.700	12.200	13.450	15.700	14.500	14.700	86.250
4.	Cristian Bataga		14.050	14.300	14.350	16.000	12.850	13.450	85.000
5.	Dimitrios Markousis		14.550	13.000	13.800	14.800	14.200	14.650	85.000
6.	Charalampos Kailidis		12.700	12.700	13.700	15.000	13.050	14.500	81.650
7.	Velislav Valchev		12.450	13.200	12.200	14.400	13.300	14.400	79.950
8.	Stavros Kekelos		13.650	11.500	13.500	15.600	11.400	13.000	78.650
9.	Flavius Koczi		15.850	14.900	13.150	16.550	13.950		74.400
10.	Andrei Ursache		14.500	15.350	13.950		14.600	13.800	72.200
11.	Cosmin Iancu			13.400	12.350	14.850	14.800	14.050	69.450
12.	Yaroslav Vovk			12.700	12.400	14.300	13.600	14.000	67.000
13.	Emil Hristov		12.850	12.400	12.850	15.400	13.000		66.500
14.	Demetres Krashias			10.300	12.450	14.600	13.000	12.050	62.400
15.	Eleftherios Kosmidis		15.250		14.450	15.600	14.100		59.400
16.	Filip Yanev			13.200	13.200		13.200	14.750	54.350
17.	Emil Stoimenov		13.600		11.700	15.100		13.300	53.700
18.	Eleftherios Petrounias		12.250	12.200	15.100		13.050		52.600
19.	Georgios Georgiou			12.200	13.350		13.800	13.200	52.550
20.	Panagiotis Aristotelous		13.850	11.350		14.500		12.650	52.350
21.	Panagiotis Tougas			13.250	13.100		13.400	12.500	52.250
22.	Hristo Marinov		11.100	12.600			13.500	13.000	50.200
23.	Konstantinos Aristotelous		11.700	10.800			13.450	14.050	50.000
24.	Georgios Spanos		11.850		11.900	14.400	11.200		49.350
25.	Marian Dragulescu		15.300			16.500		14.450	46.250
26.	Vlasios Maras			13.800		15.700		15.700	45.200
27.	Ioannis Tougas		14.600		12.700	15.400			42.700
28.	Vasilios Tsolakidis		14.400	13.300			14.900		42.600
29.	Konstantinos Barbakis		14.300	11.000		15.750			41.050
30.	Herodotos Georgallas				14.550				14.550

All-around champion Sui Lu added balance beam and floor exercise titles as the Chinese Championships concluded Monday in Hunan.

Women's all-around champion Sui Lu added two more titles as the Chinese Gymnastics Championships concluded Monday in Zhuzhou, Hunan.

Sui picked up gold medals in both the balance beam (15.550/6.7 Difficulty) and floor exercise (14.550/5.8 D).

"I think my performance was normal, because these two events (balance beam and floor exercise) have always been my strengths," said Sui, an alternate to China's 2008 Olympic team. "The goal was for these two golds — only the all-around victory was a surprise."

Zhou Qiaohong won the women's vault title with a double-twisting Tsukahara (6.0 D) and layout Rudi (6.3). Zhou thanked her coach for his patience with her during bad practices.

"If he didn't put up with me each day during training, we wouldn't have had tonight's finish," Zhou said.

All-around bronze medalist Huang Qiushuang won uneven bars, hitting her new Endo-immediate Ono combination (15.550/7.1). World and Olympic champion He Kexin, who is recovering from an injury, scratched the apparatus final.

In the men's competition, triple Olympic gold medalist Zou Kai was unable to top 21-year-old Zhang Chenglong on floor exercise and high bar. A bailed skill on floor dropped Zou's planned Difficulty score from 6.7 to 6.3, and he finished third.

"Actually, I should have had a 6.4 degree of difficulty, but the judges counted it as 6.3," Zou said with a laugh. "But it doesn't matter, even if it was 6.4, I would still have been third."

World pommel horse champion Zhang Hongtao earned the highest score of the finals with a 16.175.

On still rings, Olympic champion Chen Yibing tied world champion Yan Mingyong for the title (15.900).

Chen, untouchable on still rings from 2006 to 2008, said he welcomed the competition from his younger teammates.

"The more the merrier," he said. "I feel more pressure to improve. I like the competition."

On parallel bars, world champion Wang Guanyin tied world silver medalist Feng Zhe for the title.

Floor champion Zhang ended the competition with a second gold on high bar (16.125/7.5 D).

External Link: Chinese Gymnastics Association

2010 Chinese Gymnastics Championships
Aug. 28-29, Zhuzhou, Hunan

Women's Vault
1. Zhou Qiaohong (Fujian) 14.237
2. Huang Qiushuang (Guangdong) 13.925
3. Yang Pei (Shaanxi) 13.900

Uneven Bars
1. Huang Qiushuang (Guangdong) 15.550
2. Wu Liufang (Guangdong) 14.675
3. Huang Huidan (Zhejiang) 14.500

Balance Beam
1. Sui Lu (Shanghai) 15.550
2. Jiang Yuyuan (Zhejiang) 14.450
3. Wu Liufang (Guangdong) 14.325

Women's Floor Exercise
1. Sui Lu (Shanghai) 14.550
2. Huang Qiushuang (Guangdong) 13.825
3. Jiang Yuyuan (Zhejiang) 13.700

Men's Floor Exercise
1. Zhang Chenglong (Shandong) 15.075
2. Du Wei (Guizhou) 15.025
3. Zou Kai (Sichuan) 14.775

Pommel Horse
1. Zhang Hongtao (Shaanxi) 16.175
2. Chen Chen (Jiangsu) 15.575
3. Teng Haibin (Beijing) 15.450

Still Rings
1. Chen Yibing (Tianjin) 15.900
1. Yan Mingyong (Shanghai) 15.900
3. Luo Xuan (Hubei) 15.350
3. Liao Junlin (Guangxi) 15.350

Men's Vault
1. Du Wei (Guizhou) 15.925
2. Zhang Zhongbo (Shanghai) 15.912
3. Lu Bo (Jiangsu) 15.887

Parallel Bars
1. Feng Zhe (Sichuan) 15.500
1. Wang Guanyin (Tianjin) 15.500
3. Dong Zhendong (Shaanxi) 14.850

High Bar
1. Zhang Chenglong (Shandong) 16.125
2. Zou Kai (Sichuan) 15.600
3. Chen Xuezhang (Fujian) 15.550