London 2012 Olympics: Britain's men qualify for gymnastics team event The result will be a massive relief to British Gymnastics, which has enjoyed spectacular progress on the men's side of the sport following Louis Smith's breakthrough bronze medal on the pommel horse at the Beijing Olympics four years ago. Smith, the poster boy of the sport in Britain, has also won two bronzes at world level, while Keatings became the first Briton to win an all-around silver medal at the World Championships in London in 2009. Purvis also made it to the World Championship podium in 2010 when he bronze on the floor. But the huge strides made by the British men would have counted for little had the team failed to qualify. A finish outside the top-four would have meant the nightmare scenario of having only one male gymnast competing for Britain in London. On paper, the British squad should never have been in such a precarious situation in the first place but paid the price for a string of errors at the in Tokyo, where Britain finished 10th overall, outside the top-eight finish needed to guarantee their qualification. That left them with just one final chance to qualify last night in a make-or-break showdown involving the eight nations ranked from ninth to 16th in Japan. Ominously, the apparatus facing the British team in the opening rotation was the high bar, the piece on which they came so dramatically to grief in Tokyo, but this time there were no alarms. First up was Keatings, whose high-bar fall in Japan had started the rot for Britain, and his relief was evident as he punched the air in celebration after an error-free display earned him a solid 14.533 points. That set the tone for the rest of the rotation as each of the British gymnasts came through their routines without any mishaps, receiving thunderous applause from the 02 crowd. And any residual nerves appeared to have disappeared by the end of the second rotation on the floor as Purvis led the way with a score of 15.400. After the meltdown in Tokyo, GB performance director Tim Jones had taken the decision to play it safe with the routines, calculating that it was better to concentrate on getting the execution right than gambling on too much difficulty. But there was nothing easy about Smith's routine on his signature pommel horse, though he needed all his strength to avoid a fall as he lost momentum halfway through. Fortunately, he held things together to achieve a decent score of 15.133, reflecting the high difficulty, and with Keatings picking up 15.100 with an excellent, clean routine, an outbreak of flag-waving in the crowd greeted the news that Britain were second on the leaderboard at the halfway mark. There were a few palpitations in the British ranks when Max Whitlock broke a hand-grip during his rings routine, but with only the top four marks counting for each team, his low score of 11.600 could be eliminated. For the first time, Britain were now in a narrow overall lead, and that advantage was extended after a brilliant team performance in the vault spearheaded by Purvis's score of 16.266. Another effective team display on the parallel bars confirmed the victory.