Jordyn Wieber wins all-around title despite mistakes

The winner cried, astounded that her two mistakes on uneven bars and floor exercise didn’t relegate her to second place.

The loser cried too, after she finished her final event, floor exercise, with a routine that was done with some bent knees and maybe a turn that wasn’t quite completed.

The U.S. captured the second major women’s gold medal awarded at the 2011 World Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo on Thursday when 16-year-old Jordyn Wieber of DeWitt, Mich., won the all-around gold medal by edging out 16-year-old Victoria Komova of Russia, who won silver.

The U.S. women already won the team gold medal and the U.S. men won team bronze.

Wieber, the U.S. all-around champion, in her first senior world championship competition, finished with 59.382 points, .033 ahead of Komova.

“I was so surprised to see my name up on the top,” Wieber said, “but I was so happy at the same time. It was an amazing feeling.”

Speaking to International Gymnast magazine, Komova, who had suffered an ankle injury last July, said, “My vault was not as fully ready as it should have been. My bars were not very well done. My floor routine was mediocre. Today, on a beam I did not make some connections. Therefore, that’s why the lower score.”

Yao Jinnan of China won bronze and another American, Aly Raisman, finished fourth and, like Wieber, had a major mistake on uneven bars.

Wieber, coached by John Geddert, became the sixth American woman to win a world all-around title, joining Kim Zmeskal, Shannon Miller, Chellsie Memmel, Shawn Johnson and Bridget Sloan. None followed up with an Olympic all-around gold.

Johnson dominated the 2007 world championships and beat her American teammate Nastia Liukin. But it was Liukin who came back a year later and wowed judges in Beijing with her elegance that seemed to trump Johnson’s more strength-based gymnastics.

The last reigning world champion to win the Olympic all-around gold was Lilia Podkopayeva in Atlanta in 1996.

With Thursday’s results, Wieber and Komova become Olympic favorites along with another Russian, Aliya Mustafina, who won the 2010 world title but missed this competition with an injury.

Also, last week Liukin announced she was making a comeback. So is Olympic all-around silver medalist Johnson, who will show how far she has come this month in the Pan-American Games.

Wieber almost came to a stop on a swing on the uneven bars and was convinced she had lost the competition. But she recovered with the best balance beam routine of the night to cut Komova’s lead almost in half. But Wieber finished her floor exercise by taking a step out of bounds and it was after that when she buried her head in Geddert’s shoulder.

“I told her I was proud of her no matter what,” Geddert said. “She was mad because that mistake on bars was going to cost her and she knew it.”

Even Martha Karolyi, the U.S. women’s team coordinator, thought gold was gone after Wieber’s bars. “But Jordyn is such a strong person,” Karolyi said. “She’s just somebody with real special abilities who is able to fight back as strong as she did.”

diane.pucin@latimes.com twitter.com/mepucin Pucin reported from Los Angeles.