Great Britain's Beth Tweddle was resting her hopes on success in the floor final at the Gymnastics World Championships after her disastrous fall in the uneven bars last night.

The former world champion had been one of the favourites for gold at London's O2 Arena but she fell during yesterday's qualifying to leave her out of the running.

In the floor exercise, however, the 24-year-old from Cheshire claimed the fourth highest score to progress to Sunday's final where she will have a chance of a medal, with all three Olympic medallists from Beijing absent.

Tweddle almost fell during her opening sequence, but made a brilliant recovery to execute the rest of her difficult routine, leaving her behind Russian Anna Myzdrikova, China's Sui Lu and Romanian Ana Porgras.

"I've got a floor final to look forward to so that's a silver lining," she said.

"Obviously there was the stumble at the beginning, but I managed to compose myself and the rest of the routine I couldn't have done any better.

"I thought after that first fall I've got nothing to lose now. I think I enjoyed it a lot more after that and I'll just have to sort that one out for the final."

The Liverpool gymnast's fall during her uneven bar routine was all the more disappointing as it occurred during the 'Tweddle' - the move she created and was named after her.

She finished the routine but could only score 13.850 which left her out of the top eight qualifying positions in 11th.

"I'm pretty gutted. I didn't know anything about it until I hit the floor," she said.

"It was actually my own skill. It's just one of those things. In training leading up to it nothing went wrong.

"Leading up to it I was really looking forward to it because my routine has been going so well."

There was other success for the British women as Olympic finalist Becky Downie and Becky Wing each secured one of the 24 places in the all-around final.

Nottingham's Downie, 12th in the Beijing final, made an error on the beam as she overshot her landing and flew off the mattress but she went through in 20th spot.

"I was a little bit disappointed," she said. "I wasn't really expecting to fall off the podium, that was a first for me.

"That made it a bit more humorous than it actually was."