Olympics gymnastics: Team bronze for Britain after appeal 
 
 Great Britain's men won an astonishing Olympic bronze medal in the gymnastics team final - having originally taken silver before a Japanese appeal. 
 
 Louis Smith, Sam Oldham, Kristian Thomas, Max Whitlock and Dan Purvis sealed GB men's first Olympic team medal since a bronze in 1912. 
 
 China cruised to gold, with GB second, as the medal prospects of the United States and Germany disintegrated. 
 
 Japan, initially placed in fourth, moved up to second after an appeal. 
 
 They were unhappy with the pommel horse score awarded to Kohei Uchimura and were elevated above Britain, after lengthy deliberation by the officials, with Ukraine missing out on a bronze medal in the process. 
 
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 The result is beyond the expectations of the British team, even though they qualified for the final in third place and knew they had the ability to challenge for a medal. 
 
 "For all these guys, their first Olympic Games, to get a medal is unbelievable," Smith told BBC Sport. "Silver? Bronze? It doesn't matter, we enjoyed it, it was fantastic." 
 
 Thomas added: "It's an Olympic medal at the end of the day, it's what dreams are made of. All I could think about was winning an Olympic medal when I was younger. 
 
 "Silver would've been nice but I couldn't complain at all right now. We're in London, it's once in a lifetime and we've made the most of it." 
 
 Uchimura, whose appeal denied Britain the silver, told reporters through an interpreter: "I feel sorry [for the British]. It's strange to say I feel sorry for them, though. This is the scoring system so I shouldn't feel sorry. This is just the score." 
 
 His appeal centred on whether he had been correctly rewarded for a partially botched dismount in his pommel horse routine. The three-time world champion's score was upgraded by 0.7 marks, enough to take Japan past Britain. 
 
 Analysis What a superstar Kristian Thomas is under all that pressure. He was the anchorman. Kristian is a real professional, he is not a flashy guy. He just gets on with his work. Unbelievable and so justly deserved. 
 
 Before the final, not many would talk in more than hushed tones of a bronze medal, let alone of beating Japan. So the 10 minutes spent in silver-medal position, before Japan's successful appeal, were breathtaking as a stunned and elated audience tried to take in the scale of the British men's achievement. 
 
 China came into the event as defending world and Olympic champions, while Japan's gymnasts have been an improving world power for years, led by gymnastics superstar Uchimura. 
 
 The importance of a medal to the sport in Britain, regardless of colour, cannot be overstated. No GB men's team has previously come close to a result of this magnitude in the modern sport. 
 
 After Smith's Olympic pommel horse bronze medal in Beijing four years ago, it confirms the giant leaps forward made by British Gymnastics on the world stage. 
 
 The British team began on the pommel horse, an ideal introduction for their first appearance in a men's team final in 88 years. 
 
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 After Smith delivered handsomely in his specialist event with a score of 15.966, GB suffered a dip on rings, their weakest piece. 
 
 But then Thomas put in the performance of his life on vault for a score of 16.550 to keep Britain in the hunt for bronze. 
 
 As the tension mounted, Oldham endured a costly fall on the high bar - a repeat of his error at last year's World Championships - only for Thomas to throw everything at his high bar routine to keep hopes alive. 
 
 Then, as the Japanese suffered a near-unthinkable succession of mistakes on the pommel horse, Whitlock, Purvis and Thomas landed every move of their floor routines to finish. 
 
 In a bizarre and confusing finale, the Japanese lodged their successful appeal, which was met with inevitable derision from the home crowd, though replays suggested it had merit. 
 
 If that conclusion took the wind out of British sails, it should not. After a glimpse of silver, the performance heralds a golden era. ||||| An extraordinary and controversial finale to the men's team final ended with Britain securing a bronze medal – their first medal since 1912. They had initially been awarded the silver, but an inquiry into Kohei Uchimura's final score on pommel horse resulted in a revision of the final scores and pushed Japan above them into second place. 
 
 China retained their Olympic gold medal, maintaining an adamantine grip on the competition throughout, and there was a 10 minute wait before the final placings were decided. In the end, however, Britain's bronze, hard fought and stylishly won, will be a result that goes down in the history books. 
 
 There had been a sense, even before the competition, that the British men had fulfilled their ambitions simply by reaching the final and all the gymnasts reiterated that their aim for the final was simply to enjoy it. That relaxed attitude showed as they made their way around the apparatus. They had begun on their strongest suit, the pommel horse, where Louis Smith lowered his difficulty level to ensure a routine of care and precision and with fine contributions from Daniel Purvis and Max Whitlock their apparatus total of 45.932 was a fantastic start to competition. 
 
 By the halfway point, they were in third place and within 0.8 of a point of second-placed Japan and Smith was wearing an extremely large smile. Then Sam Oldham fell on the high bar, and suddenly Ukraine were back in the hunt. Vitali Nakonechnyi put in a clean routine on pommel and Kristian Thomas responded with one of his best ever performances on high bar, to keep Britain in touch. 
 
 It came down to how well they could perform their floor routines, while Ukraine, also fighting for bronze, went on rings. Both Max Whitlock and Dan Purvis turned in high scores, before Thomas finished the job with not a trace of nerves. 
 
 China, meanwhile, were nothing like the team that had shambled sheepishly through qualification. The errors that were shot through that performance, leaking points from their total, were gone, and there was something new in their attitude here – a focus and determination that showed itself on their faces as they performed. After a strong start on rings, they recorded the highest score on vault and by the time they were on parallel bars they looked completely in their stride. 
 
 Japan had also recovered their composure after a disappointing qualification and fought them hard in the final three rotations. Uchimura, their star package, was back on world champion form. His high bar routine was without doubt the most spectacular event of this final, Uchimura hurling himself so high above the bar that he had time to somersault and twist in inhuman combinations. 
 
 The USA, by contrast, had a nightmare. Having qualified their men's and women's teams in first place for the only time in history, they had a veneer of invincibility and their first team title since 1984 seemed a likelihood. But they had problems on pommel horse, putting in two low scores, and after a recovery on rings, all rested on the vault, where they were expected to score high. But the 19-year-old John Orozco missed his landing on his very first vault, and as he sat on the crash mat, his legs splayed before him, he knew his team's dream was over. It was a miss from which the American team would not be able to recover.
– China easily took the gold medal in the men's gymnastics final today, but who got silver was a matter of some controversy. When the event was first concluded, Britain stood at an astonishing second place, followed by the Ukraine. But Japan, sitting in fourth, launched an appeal, complaining that their pommel horse score was too low—and the judges ultimately agreed, bumping them all the way up to silver, the BBC reports. Even a bronze medal represented a huge upset for Britain—before the event "nobody would talk in more than hushed tones of a bronze medal, let alone beating Japan," writes Ollie Williams of the BBC. But boos rained down on the Japanese as they accepted their medals anyway, the Guardian reports. The highly-touted US squad, incidentally, finished a disappointing fifth, according to the San Jose Mercury News.