Simon Barnes is blogging from Beijing every day. Follow his Games here

There was a moment when I thought they might blow it. It was a moment I shared with a billion others. It's a strange feeling, to be one of a billion people all thinking the unthinkable at the same time. For everyone expected the men's team gymnastics to be a bit of a formality - and in this country, they do like a bit of formality.

China had dominated the qualifying sessions. The Japanese said that they would be lying in wait, but they only had a chance if the Chinese made a mistake. The rest agreed, many of them openly, that they were all competing for the bronze.

But it's not always easy to win when all you have to do is turn up. It's not easy when there are the odd billion who will be furious if you fail. The fear of letting people down can be a very strong thing, and the more people there are for the letting down, the heavier the burden. And gymnastics is not amenable to control. You can't avoid risks: taking part in the sport is by definition a risk.

Britain's medal hopes soar and dive

Rebecca Adlington wins swimming gold but Tom Daley, the 14-year-old, falls out with his diving partner

• Nicole Cooke prepares to return to scene of greatest triumph

• Women add to British rowing success

• David Price must make size matter against world's best super-heavyweight

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

Related Links

• Something in the air tonight in Beijing

• Targeting medals is fraught with danger

• Adlington snatches a moment in time

The men's competition takes place on five things you can fall off and one more, the floor, you can fall over on. There is a razor-thin line on which perfection rests; either side lie the errors of over and under-rotation. The adrenalin-charged put too much on a tumble and fall forward, the too-careful fail to give enough and stumble back.

Gymnastics is designed to take you to the far edge of the possibilities of the human body and see if you fall off. Stress, that great two-edged sword of sport, will sometimes inspire, sometimes inhibit. It seemed that the stress of the expectation of the watching billion was a mite heavy. China began with a poor floor and an unexceptional pommel horse. After two bits of apparatus, they were in fifth place. It was time to get serious.

The sport has changed its format. The perfect 10 has been abandoned, either because the sport has realised that perfection is not a human option, or because it has been decided that gymnastics has long since gone beyond perfection. That means gilded, rock-solid mediocrity is no longer enough. The more you cram your work with difficulty, the higher your score will be. Gymnasts are now encouraged to build their houses on the slopes of Vesuvius.

But the format for the team competition has also been changed - and brutally. No gymnast can fail. Three go in each discipline, all three count. One fails, all fail. Chen Yibing over-rotated, muffed his landing, stepped off the mat. The wrong red flag flew; China were up against it.

Third up, the rings: twin instruments of torture, testing strength in the impossible moves called the square and the crucifix, knotted muscles, bulging veins, tendons like steel hawsers. Pain and grace merge and become one. Arms extended, gravity to be defied by sheer will, the ropes kept motionless by technique and strength. Once they start flapping, you're cooked.

Yang Wei, probably the finest gymnast here and favourite for the individual all-around gold medal, showed an eerie calm as he took his body through the required period of elegant torment. Chen then performed even better and showed how foolish is the cliché of the inscrutability of the Chinese. As he spotted his landing perfectly from a flying dismount, he showed not elation but prayerful relief. Even in an atheist state, you must at times give thanks to something outside yourself. He had made amends.

China were now second, and with the vaulting horse before them, they took wing. You get only one chance at the vault in the men's competition, about a second and a half to get it right or blow it for ever. You must defy gravity and rotate an impossible number of times and that's all before the difficult part: landing. Bang, bang, bang: three vaults, three landings.

And now the high fives and the big tens had some real power and purpose behind them. After an emphatic performance on the parallel bars, the last three gymnasts came out like relief pitchers in baseball and finished the job on the high bar: nothing flash, just safe, solid and victorious. The West has traditionally feared the Chinese and wondered if they lack certain qualities of humanity. Yesterday, the China gymnasts showed us such human things as fear, anxiety, ambition, hope, loyalty, mutual support, effort, achievement and victory. Who can't empathise with that? And them?