Britain’s mens gymnastics squad seized their last chance to qualify a full team for this year’s Olympic Games after coming out on top in the final test event at the O2 Arena.

The hosts, who had to finish in the first four of the eight competing nations in order to book an Olympic team place, came into this competition under pressure after their shock failure at last year’s World Championships in Tokyo.

But they held their collective nerve by winning the team event with a total of 358.227 points ahead of France on 350.659, Spain (347.292) and Italy (346.334), as Canada, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Belarus all missed out.

Daniel Purvis led the British men with a fine all-round performance, finishing with the highest individual score of the day of 89.948 points for the six pieces of apparatus.

It meant the British men qualified a full team of five gymnasts for an Olympics for the first time since the Barcelona Games 20 years ago.

Before Monday’s competition there had been fears Louis Smith, bronze medallist on the pommel horse in Beijing four years ago, would be the lone British male gymnast at London 2012.

But now the men will join the British women, who secured a full team line-up at the London Olympics after finishing fifth in Tokyo.