BEIJING -- As time is running out towards the Beijing Olympic Games, the "Queen of Vault" Cheng Fei decides to drop her attempt on the women's individual all-around.

Cheng Fei of China performs her routine on the vault at the gymnastics Olympic test in National Indoor Stadium, Beijing, November 28, 2007. The triple vault world champion decided to drop out of  the women's individual all-around as time is running out towards the Beijing Olympic Games. [Xinhua]

"As far as the all-around concerned, I have decided to give it up," said Cheng, triple vault world champion in a row, here on the gymnastics Olympic test on Wednesday. "The time leading to the Beijing Olympics is not too much there and quite a few gymnasts in Chinese team are capable of challenging the event, so I finally give it away."

Cheng, who pocketed up three golds in last year's world championships, won the single gold medal for Chinese women at the Stuttgart world championships on September.

She was just upgraded to captain the Chinese women team this month and is regarded as the Chinese ace in women's rivalship in the Beijing Olympics.

The 19-year-old Cheng is a favorite candidate for Olympic glory not only in her signature apparatus -- vault, but the floor exercise, in which she was crowned last year.

"I have a few apparatuses to shoot at, such as the vault, floor exercise and women's team, so it's really demanding for me to develop further on others," said Cheng.

Cheng's words is echoed soundly by the deeds at the Stuttgart world championships. Cheng made errors both on beam and floor exercise after making do with women's team silver.

At the gymnastic worlds, Cheng fell off the beam and stumbled out of the bounds in floor dismount, which cost her the gold-winning routine otherwise.

The most toilsome gymnasts in Stuttgart are China's Yang Wei and Japan's Hisashi Tomita. Both have team's competition, men's all-around, and individual finals, but it turned out to be ineffective for an athlete to take up too many.

Yang managed to win the men's team title and went on to claim the all-around, but it just consumed too much for him to finish his reining parallel bars well. He tumbled in his very first action on handstand.

It just messed up for the 2005 world all-around champion Tomita, who made a series of blunders and ended up without any individual medal after the team silver.

If Cheng picks up the all-around, she needs to strengthen the uneven bars. The new training program will inevitably take up time allocated to her strongholds like vault, floor and even beam.

Abandoning wisely is a way of gaining. Of course, it needs the checkout eight months later in the Beijing Olympics.