China's Zou Jingyuan (center), Germany's Lukas Dauser (left), and the Philippines' Carlos Edriel Yulo celebrate on the podium in Liverpool, the UK on November 6, 2022. Photo: VCG

China's Olympic champion Zou Jingyuan showed his dominance on the parallel bars by winning the event at the 51st Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Liverpool, the UK on Sunday.

Zou performed his routine in the final with an unparalleled difficulty score of 6.9 points and took the gold with 16.166 points.

Olympic runner-up Lukas Dauser of Germany settled for second place with 15.500 points, and the Philippines' Carlos Yulo was third with 15.366 points.

"At first, I just wanted to stick with the original routine with a difficulty score of 6.5 points and perform it perfectly," said Zou. "But then I decided to try the harder one to challenge myself."

"You could see that I was a little bit rushed and shaky, and there was a little pressure. But I am satisfied with my performance," he added.

In the men's vault, Armenian veteran Artur Davtyan dethroned Yulo to win the title.

Yulo, 22-year-old rising star, led the final with 14.950 points until 30-year-old Davtyan staged two routines with more steady landings to take top spot with 15.050 points.

Three-time Olympian Igor Radivilov of Ukraine took the bronze medal in 14.733 points.

Japan's Hazuki Watanabe took gold in the women's beam after performing her routine solidly to finish top with 13.600 points.

Ellie Black of Canada followed behind with 13.566 points, while Watanabe's teammate Shoko Miyata was third on 13.533.

"At first, I was the team's reserve, but when there was an injury they changed things and I had the chance to come to the World Championships. That was my first surprise. Now I have a medal too. It is all a bit surprising," said Watanabe.

The home crowd roared with joy as Jessica Gadirova took the women's floor gold, while the nine-day competition concluded with Brody Malone of the US grabbing the last gold on the horizontal bar.

The top-three finishing men's teams of China, Japan and Britain qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games, with the women's teams of the US, Britain and Canada doing likewise.

Last week, Daiki Hashimoto, Japan's Olympic champion of men's all-around in 2021's Tokyo Games, claimed his first world title in this event.

Hashimoto, 22, won the rematch with China's Zhang Boheng whom he lost to at 2021's World Championships by just 0.017 points.

After two rotations, Hashimoto took the top position while Zhang reduced their gap to 0.499 points after claiming the highest score on the rings.

As they collected exactly the same scores on both vault and the horizontal bar, an advantage of 0.066 points on the parallel bars wasn't enough for Zhang to beat Hashimoto, who eventually won the gold with 87.198 points.

Zhang followed behind with 86.765 points while Hashimoto's teammate Wataru Tanigawa took the bronze with 85.231 points.

"His performance is so good," Hashimoto commented on Zhang. 

"I couldn't win this competition last year because he won. So I felt sad."

"Competing against him was a motivation [today]. The battle with Zhang Boheng is so good."

Xinhua