WUHAN, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- China has clinched the men's team and all-around titles at the Military World Games so far, but that won't bother the Brazilian gymnasts, who are the main challengers to the host team.
Brazil finished with a silver in the team and their gymnasts Caio Souza and Lucas Bitencourt took the third and fourth places in all-around, only after two Chinese top gymnasts, Xiao Ruoteng and Deng Shudi.
The overall performances and results achieved here have been good enough to satisfy the Brazilians. And they got their main purpose done as well, which is to pave the way for Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
"We knew this was going to be a high-level competition. We mainly used this competition as another test in our lead-up to the Olympics," said Arthur Zanetti of Brazil, who just won the floor exercises bronze on Friday. "Competing at as many competitions as possible will only help us to get better."
Zanetti commented their team's performance as quite good and gave thumps-up to the level of competition, though he had to admit that beating China seemed to be basically impossible.
"The level was like the Olympics competition here. We, Brazil, took our best team to China as half of the squad was part of the team at the gymnastics world championships a week ago in Stuttgart," added Zanetti.
To Zanetti, the competitions here provided opportunities for athletes to test themselves and get to know each other and that's something quite valuable towards next year's Olympics.
It's the first time the gymnastics has been involved in the Military World Games programs, but only men's events will be staged here. The gymnastics contest will continue on Friday with apparatus competitions rolling out.
