It was a big day in Sofia, with the senior men taking the floor once again in the team final. Despite being the favorites and leaders during qualifications, Great Britain was not able to repeat their stellar performance from Thursday and suffered some costly mistakes early on in the competition. Instead, it was Russia who took home the gold with a total team score of 267.959, with the British team settling for the silver with a 265.953 team score. The bronze medal went to the Ukraine (who qualified to the final in third place) with a 262.087 team total.
 

Team GB started their day on rings, where they got off to a rocky start after Max Whitlock fell on his double-double dismount and earned only a 13.666. Their misfortune continued on vault, where Kristian Thomas fell on his Yurchenko double pike. Going into their final two events, the team was behind its desired ranking but was able to make up some ground on floor. There was redemption for Whitlock, whose 15.700 marked the best score so far in this championship, and going into the pommel horse, the British were only 0.8 points behind the Russian team.  Three fabulous pommel horse sets (with Whitlock scoring a huge 16.200!) were enough to land them on the silver medal spot on the podium, only two points behind team Russia.
 

The Russians also started off slow on pommels, with David Belyavski falling and earning a 13.200. However, a strong performance on rings, highlighted by Denis Abliazin’s 15.633, got them back on track and placed them in the lead. A slight set-back occurred again on vault when Nikita Ignatyev, their lead-off vaulter, over-rotated his Roche vault and placed a hand on the mat, scoring a 13.666 with the fall. But two strong vaults from Abliazin and Belyavski were enough to keep the team in the lead, which they maintained until the end of the competition. They finished with a score nearly three points higher than their qualification marks!
 

The Ukrainian team performed solidly throughout the competition, with some of the highlights coming from Volodymyr Okachev’s one-armed Zu Li Ming element on high bar and Oleg Verniaiev’s impressive floor routine, where he scored a 15.100 for his double-double and triple twisting dismount. They sat in third place heading into the last rotation, where they followed team GB on the pommel horse. Three clean routines, anchored by Verniaev, brought their team total to a 262.087 and landed them in the bronze medal position! There were smiles and cheers all around after this result.
 

On the German team, Fabian Hambuechen suffered a bit of misfortune on his pommel horse routine, not quite reaching the full turn in handstand and thereby missing his D-score dismount requirement. However, the team performed well on the whole, with Marcel Nguyen nearly sticking his Roche vault for a 14.800 and Hambuechen’s full twisting double layout helping him earn a 15.266 on floor. They finished their competition on the high bar, where Hambuechen’s 15.366 in the anchor position brought their team total to a 260.711. Despite his redemptive performance after the pommels mitake, it was not enough for the bronze, and they walked away empty-handed in fourth place.
 

Fifth through eighth places went to France (258.892), the Netherlands (256.979), Romania (252.779) and Belarus (252.672), respectively.

Results below via Sofia Gymnastics