Chinese gymnasts dominated the men's qualifiers to book the first place ahead of Japan, while the Athens Olympic silver medallists U.S. fell out of the finals to settle with the eleventh at Aarhus gymnastic worlds in Denmark on Sunday.

China's Yibing Chen performs on the pommel horse for the men's qualifiers during the 39th Artisitic Gymnastics World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, October 14, 2006.[Reuters]

When the agonizing qualification round was over, the members of the U.S. men's team put their arms around each other and came together in a close-knit huddle to share words of encouragement.

"We gave everything we had out there today," American rings specialist Kevin Tan said Saturday, after a qualifying round at world championships his team would love to forget. "We're not happy it happened this way. But we keep fighting."

The second sub-division highlighted the qualifiers featuring two powerhouses China and Japan. China took in 370.450 points to lead Japan (367.75) in the top of team ranking as all pundits expected the two teams are too overwhelming for others after witnessing the the podium training. Russia (365.4) was next. The United States (358.1) was squeezed out the top eight teams and could only watch the finals on Tuesday.

"But we're far from finished," team coordinator Ron Brant said. "We're all preparing for 2008, the Beijing Olympics."

Chinese gymnasts and coach all put on smile on their faces and waved to the cheering crowd on seats when they left the ARGi Arena with all their targets pocketing up out of qualifiers. The head of Chinese delegation watched the qualifying round on a spectator's seat and sent out the news of first-stage victory through text message on mobile phone.

"All our gymnasts are excellent. We have hit our first target in spite of some small flaws by sending those hopeful through to finals," said Zhang Peiwen, head of Chinese delegation.

"The young gymnasts are very good, even the debutant, and they presented very consistent performance all through the qualifiers. Zou Kai (18) debuted to take third in floor exercise; Chen Yibing (22) leads in rings; Xiao Qin (21) takes the first place in pommel horse, added with a few second or third finishers, so everything goes as we expected," added Zhang.

U.S. sent out a complete young contingent of untested gymnasts by stripping of all its stars from the silver-medal team of the Athens Olympics. But even brothers of Hamm here couldn't salvaged the fall of U.S. who were so far away trailing.

America's national champion, Sasha Artemev, started poorly on the floor, struggling early to push to a handstand. He nearly fell off the parallel bars which he called a foolish mistake and then he did fall off the high bar during his mount. Elsewhere, Jonathan Horton fell twice from the high bar to go with another mistake on parallel bars.

Germany (361.075) came up in the last moment to extrude Spain out of the top eight with a sixth-place finish behind Romania (364.325) and Canada (361.975). Switzerland (259.200) registered a place in final attributing to a relatively flawless qualifier in seventh. Belarus (359.175) notched the last spot leading to finals.