Highlights - GB's Keatings clinches Euro gold
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By Ollie Williams
BBC Sport at the National Indoor Arena, Birmingham |
World silver medallist Daniel Keatings trumped team-mate Louis Smith to win gold on the pommel horse at the men's European Championships in Birmingham.
Keatings, who won silver in the all-around at the 2009 World Championships, scored 15.600 to push Olympic pommel bronze medallist Smith into silver.
GB's Daniel Purvis shared floor bronze as German Matthias Fahrig won gold.
Individual apparatus finals are taking place on Sunday after Britain's men won silver in the team event on Saturday.
Smith was first to compete in the eight-man pommel horse final, but had to work hard after mid-routine errors.
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He almost toppled off the horse in a near-echo of the same disastrous mistake he made at the 2009 World Championships in London, but found enough momentum to keep moving before a flamboyant finale earned him a score of 15.375.
In the absence of defending champion Krisztian Berki of Hungary, who surprisingly failed to progress from Friday's qualifying, Smith looked as though he might cruise to gold.
But Keatings, who fell from the pommel in Saturday's team event, pulled out a peerless routine competing second-last, never looking back from an excellent handstand at the start.
Romania's Flavius Koczi, last to go, came up short as he struggled to find the difficulty required to overhaul Keatings.
Purvis grew in confidence during his floor routine, shaking off some very slight errors to produce a superb final landing for a score of 15.250.
The powerful Fahrig, however, knew he had wrapped up gold ahead of Greece's Eleftherios Kosmidis, leaping from the floor with a broad grin even before his score of 15.650 had been announced.
Sunday's competition at the National Indoor Arena sees Europe's top gymnasts compete for individual honours on the six sets of apparatus - the floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar.
Highlights - Britain's Purvis wins floor bronze
On Saturday, Smith, Keatings and Purvis helped Britain to silver, behind Germany, in the team final.
There is no all-around final (where scores on all six pieces produce an overall winner) at this event.
Several leading gymnasts are missing from the European Championships after teams from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were prevented from travelling by problems related to the volcanic ash cloud which spread over Europe in the run-up to the competition.
Earlier on Sunday, Britain's junior male gymnasts continued their rich vein of form with three more individual gold medals.
Max Whitlock won the floor and pommel horse events, while Sam Oldham took gold on the high bar.
Unlike the seniors, the juniors do have an all-around competition, which was won by Oldham on Saturday with Whitlock in second, while the duo led a British squad to junior team gold on Thursday.
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