Kristian Thomas: Gold and bronze medal in Olympic test event
Britain's Kristian Thomas won gold and bronze in Friday night's individual apparatus finals at the Olympic gymnastics test event.
Thomas raised the roof at the O2 (known as the North Greenwich arena during the Olympics) by winning bronze in the vault and then gold in the high bar.
His bronze-medal winning vault came in the first event of the evening, and then he ended on a high note as well with the gold medal display on the high bar.
Five individual finals were contested - men's vault, parallel bars and high bar, along with beam and floor in the women's competition - to test the equipment and scoring systems.
Thomas, who also won bronze in last night's floor final, was the first British man in action in the vault and scored 15.933 with his first attempt after a slighting off-balance landing.
Solid
He followed it up with a solid second effort to earn an average of 15.849 and claim bronze behind winner Igor Radivilov of the Ukraine and the USA's Steven Legendre.
Fellow Briton Ruslan Panteleymonov was unable to land his first vault, which had a high difficulty tariff of 7.000, but improved with his second to score an average of 15.100 and finish in eighth place.
Daniel Keatings, who won all-around silver at the same venue in the 2009 world championships, was the only Briton in the parallel bars final and produced a clean routine of 14.533 to finish seventh.
Mexico's Daniel Corral Barron won gold with a total of 15.300 ahead of Holland's Epke Zonderland who claimed silver, with Japan's Shoichi Yamamoto in bronze medal position.
The last final of the night was the high bar and Thomas, who was the penultimate gymnast to perform, produced a clean routine which scored 14.933. Spain's Fabian Gonzalez was the last man in action and tied for silver with Holland's Jeffrey Wammes, just 0.067 points behind the Briton, with Thomas' team-mate Daniel Purvis in fourth.
Perfect ending
"It was the perfect way to end a pretty perfect competition," Thomas said. "I'm over the moon with the way it went and the performance so I couldn't be happier.
"It was great to experience [being on the podium] as a team and then as an individual it was just perfect.
"I've just got to keep working hard now and show consistency is a key element, and I think as long as I continue doing that I'm sure I'll be in the final five [for the Olympics]."
In the women's beam final, reigning world champion Sui Lu fell four times to finish in eighth place, as Greece's Vasiliki Millousi and Italy's Carlotta Ferlito tied for gold with a score of 14.500, with Israel's Valeriia Maksiuta in third.
On the floor, Italy's Vanessa Ferrari won gold, Canada's Victoria Moors took silver and Brazil's Daiane dos Santos and France's Marine Brevet were tied for bronze.
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