Australian gymnast Prashanth Sellathurai has defended his bronze medal in the pommel horse final at the 2010 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Rotterdam overnight, reaffirming his position as one of the world’s best apparatus competitors.

The 24-year-old medical science student from Sydney overcame a niggling hand injury to add his third world championship medal to his impressive collection, which already boasts a silver from the 2006 world championships and bronze last year at the world titles in London.

Once again displaying his prowess on the world stage, Sellathurai unleashed a clean, strong and rapid routine on his favourite apparatus with a clean handstand dismount for a score of 15.566.

However the night belonged to arch rival and dual world silver medallist Krisztian Berki of Hungary who won his first gold medal of his career.

First up on the pommel, Berki performed a brilliant routine which was awarded an unsurpassed 15.833 from the judges. Sellathurai was sitting in the silver medal position with three competitors remaining, before being edged out by Olympic bronze medallist Louis Smith from Great Britain who scored 15.733.

Although the gold was just out of reach for Sellathurai on this occasion, that elusive world title is still in sight.

“My routine was pretty straight forward tonight,” Sellathurai said. “It’s such a relief to get through it.”

"It’s always nice to medal at the world championships. I’m very grateful as it could have very easily not happened. It would be a dream to get a world title one day, and hopefully the day is not too far off.”

Coach Xiong Song-Liang was most impressed with Sellathurai’s ability to block out the hand injury which he suffered during the qualification round, and get on with the task at hand.

“The first thing I was really happy with was Prashanth’s mental toughness,” Xiong said. “After the qualification, he had a hand injury and to overcome that mentally, I was really happy.

“The top gymnasts in the pommel horse final compete in their routines not based on technique, but based on mental ability. I’m very happy with the outcome.

“Hopefully next year we can work on getting his start score higher, so we can challenge the top pommel horse athletes.”

Sellathurai, who won two gold medals and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi earlier this month, will now turn his attention to next year’s world championships in Tokyo, the all-important qualifying event for the London Olympics.

With dual world championships silver medallist Lauren Mitchell, who placed sixth in the women's all-around final, still to compete in the floor and beam final tonight from 11pm AEDST, Australia’s overall medal tally throughout the history of the world championships sits at nine – one gold, four silver and four bronze.

Gymnastics Australia