Gymnastics-Russia bury memories of Stuttgart nightmare

By Pritha Sarkar

LAUSANNE, May 10 (Reuters) - Russia buried memories of their nightmare outing at last year's world championships by retaining the team title at the men's European gymnastics championships on Saturday.

Last September, the Russian men drew a blank in Stuttgart and their confidence hit an all-time low less than a year ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

"Stuttgart was like a horrible dream and that made us even more motivated to do well here," Russian coach Andrey Rodionenko told Reuters.

When Yury Ryazanov and Maxim Deviatovski produced scrappy performances on the pommel horse, in the second rotation for the team, it looked as though another title bid would end in disappointment.

However, Rodionenko's charges showed that they had learned an important lesson in Germany.

The quintet gathered their wits and went on to outshine their opponents and retain the European title they won two years ago with a series of well-executed routines on the remaining four apparatus.

Despite eclipsing Germany and Romania, Rodionenko did not want to get carried away about their Olympic prospects.

While Anton Golotsutskov drew the highest mark of 16.500 for the Russians, on the vault, it was well short of the 17.000 barrier often broken by Chinese athletes in the international arena.