Hong Kong's Shek Wai-hung scooped a shock men's vault gold today as South Korea's Olympic champion Yang Hak-Seon stumbled to silver on a night of slips and spills in the Asian Games gymnastics.
Chinese teenager Yao Jinnan continued her stellar Games, winning her fourth gold medal in the women's floor routine, while North Korea's Kim Un-Hyang benefited from rivals' falls to triumph in the balance beam.
Five-time Olympic champion Zou Kai of China outclassed the field in the high bar, taking gold from Japan's Yusuke Saito, with Masayoshi Yamato third.
The talk before the competition had been about the men's vault clash between Yang and his North Korean rival Ri Se-Gwang, the Asian Games champion in 2006.
But Ri suffered a calamitous first vault, badly misjudging his landing on a forward tumbling dismount to end up with his face on the mat.
Vaulting first, the unfancied Shek, 23, laid down a marker for his illustrious rivals with two wonderfully executed vaults for a score of 15.216.
Ri's dramatic tumble left him looking bewildered and the sizeable North Korean delegation in the stands aghast and while he recovered well on his second run, it was not enough to better Shek and he was pipped to bronze by China's Huang Xi.
With Ri out of contention the gold seemed to be Yang's for the taking, but he too stumbled on his first vault and was penalised for stepping out of the landing zone.
The boisterous crowd in Incheon's Namdong Gymnasium raised the roof as the stadium announcer said Yang would attempt his trademark, high-scoring triple twist dismount, nicknamed the "Yang", on his second run.
But after turning his back on the vault to compose himself, Yang unexpectedly went for a simpler dismount and there was a stunned silence when his overall score, 15.200, flashed up on the boards.
Afterwards a distraught Yang, 21, said he was still suffering the effects of a hamstring strain picked up in training last week and could not find the power needed for the harder vault.
"When I hit the table I felt the 'Yang' wasn't going to happen so I didn't complete the technique. I think I should have pushed harder," he said.
