Gymnastics: Jackson vault helps hosts keep title

Excellence on the six apparatus that make up the men's team gymnastics competition, won last night by England ahead of Canada and Australia, is measured by how closely the athletes adhere to the spirit of each and how gracefully they move as they do so.

Performances on the floor, for example, are designed to show strength, grace and acrobatic skill. On the rings, the aim is to demonstrate strength and control in equal measure between the holds and swings.

Similar goals are set for the vault, pommel horse, parallel bars and high bar. A mark out of 10 is given to each competitor on each apparatus, with fixed deductions for errors such as falling off. The team's three highest scorers on each apparatus go towards the total. Perfection, as in darts, is 180, but without a copious belly in sight.

England scored 162.075 last night as they retained the title they won four years ago to take the country's second gold of these Commonwealth Games. John Smethurst, Craig Heap and Ross Brewer were involved in both successes while Kanukai Jackson and Cuong Thoong joined them this year. Canada scored 161.350 last night and Australia 159.100. Scotland were fourth.

The most notable performance came from Jackson, who excelled, especially on the vault. Heap, who is considering whether to join a circus in Las Vegas, showed he was no clown, not least on the high bar. Smethurst was the best on the parallel bars.

At the other end of the scale were the lesser gymnastic nations, like Barbados and Cameroon and Nigeria, who either did not have enough personnel to register a full team mark or fielded sole braves who were content to try to win a place in the later finals. When they weren't fallen flat on their faces from a height, that is.

The team competitions – the men's last night and the women's today – will determine who enters tomorrow's individual all-around finals and the individual apparatus finals on Monday.

Clearly Kehinde Omoregie of Nigeria will not be anywhere near the pommel horse or high bar finals. The criteria in the pommel horse is the more daring a competitor is, the higher his tally.

Omoregie did what many people do on a horse. He sat on it, looked a bit nervous, jigged about a bit and got off. He scored 3.3 out of 10. On the high bar, where marks are awarded for speed and the difficulty of the swing, plus turns and hand movements, he fell off. He got 3.15. He did manage an 8.2 on the vault however, as Nigeria amassed a team total of 59.3.

Such low scores are one reason why Hartmut Fink, a fabulously named technical expert from the International Gymnastics Federation, took time this week to address concerns about the likely standard of Games competition.

"The standard will vary because we do have some of the weaker countries competing," he said in a statement released by the Games' organisers under the slightly disingenuous headline "Gymnastics Official Predicts High Level of Competition". Fink added: "But we also have many of the strongest nations. There will be some top performances across the board."

That will be true, in patches, despite the absence of the superpowers of China, Romania, Russia, America or any of the countries from the former Soviet Union.

Not that the public seem to care one way or the other. The G-MEX Centre was packed to capacity last night and will be for every session.