In the absence of the King, China’s Xiao Ruoteng rose to win his first world championships all-around medal — gold in Montreal on Thursday night.
Xiao, who was not on China’s Olympic team, came from nearly six tenths behind in the final rotation to overtake Russian David Belyavskiy for the title.
Belyavskiy opened the door by falling on his last routine on high bar, falling to fourth place, just where he finished in Rio.
Xiao tallied 86.933 points to become the first Chinese gymnast to take gold since Yang Wei at the 2008 Olympics.