The team had to finish in the top eight at the World Championships in the Japanese capital to ensure they sealed a place at next year's Olympics.

Failure to do so would have meant a potentially tricky second-chance qualifier in January.

In the end, progress was booked by the narrowest of margins as Britain did come eighth, a significant achievement that guarantees the women's team get to take a full complement into the London Games.

Qualification was secured by Beth Tweddle (pictured), Becky Downie, Hannah Whelan, Danusia Francis, Imogen Cairns and Jenni Pinches, who combined for a cumulative score of 220.553 points.

"This result is massive for us," British Gymnastics Olympic performance director Tim Jones.

"We were very clear when we came to Tokyo that almost the sole goal was to support our men's and women's team to get the best results possible and to make the top eight.

"We didn't want to go through the second-chance saloon of having to qualify through the test event in January and so today was a job well done.

"We are clearly not at the very high level of the USA, Russia, China, Romania but we are making inroads and it's all credit to the girls that they came here and did the job, and we now look forward to London 2012."

Treble world champion Tweddle summed up the importance of the team element to the competition, revealing she almost cried when qualification was secured.

"The last few minutes were tense," she said.

"We saw Japan go ahead of us and until we had France's score confirmed on the scoreboard, we didn't want to take it for granted.

"Even if it's only just, it doesn't matter.

"We've got that top-eight spot and a team to 2012, that's what we came for.

"As soon as we were stood waiting for that score, I think all of us just wanted to cry."

Outside of the British team the highlight of the qualification was the emergence of a stellar line up of young American gymnasts lead by Jordyn Wieber and Alexandra Raisman who qualified second and fourth in the all-around and helped the United States team to 234.253 points and top spot.

The other qualifiers were Russia, China, Romania, Japan, Australia and Germany.

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