Upbeat Smith impresses to reach world final

By Chris Cottrell and Kathryn Catney, Sportsbeat, at the o2

GREAT Britain's Louis Smith underlined his medal credentials with a near-flawless pommel horse qualifying performance at the World Gymnastics Championships.

IMPRESSIVE: Louis Smith produced a solid routine to advance to the pommel horse final in third place at the World Gymnastics Championships in London

The Olympic bronze medallist advanced to Saturday's final in third place as he produced a carbon-copy performance of his routine from Beijing.

Smith, 20, dedicated his display to his grandmother, who died last week, but admits he'll need to find a new level to challenge rivals, China's Zhang Hongtao and Hungary's Krisztian Berki, who both produced stunning qualifying displays.

"I'll increase the difficulty with my next routine, and I'm as confident with that as I was with this routine," said Smith.

"I'm really pleased to qualify because there was a lot of pressure on me, with this event being in London.

"Luckily I dealt with it, kept my head screwed on and did the job.

"At the moment I'm not thinking about a medal, I just want a clean routine and then I'll see where that takes me."

Zhang, who beat Olympic champion Xiao Qin to qualify for the World Championship, scored 16.275 ahead of Berki's 16.100 and Smith's 15.900.

FOCUS: Daniel Keatings misses the pommel horse final after an error but looks a prospect for an all-around next on Thursday (Getty Images)

Elsewhere, Great Britain's Daniel Keatings and Kristian Thomas both advanced to Thursday's men's all-around final.

But Keatings won't join Smith in the final of the pommel horse, the apparatus in which he claimed a bronze medal at the European Championships in Milan earlier this year.

"Overall I'm pleased, it went good," said Keatings.

"I had a couple of unfortunate errors, which can be sorted out in the next day or two.

"The first half of pommel went really clean but in the dismount my hand slipped. It's one of my highest scoring apparatus, so that's upsetting.

"But the important thing was to qualify for the all-around.

"I'm going to go into Thursday feeling positive. I'm going to do the best I can and hopefully go clean on the six routines. I'm hoping I've got my mistakes out of the way now."

Keatings advances to the all-around final ranked fourth - behind Japan's Kohei Uchimura, Russia's Maxim Devyatovskiy and American Timothy O'Neill.

Thomas also progressed despite some mixed performances - his vault was stunning but he struggled on the floor, meaning he finished ranked ninth overall.

"I'm quite happy but there is room for improvement," he said.

"I'm going to approach the final like I do every competition. The crowd got right behind me today and that felt really good."