Chia-Hung sails into horizontal bar final at Doha World Cup
Doha: Tang Chia-Hung of Chinese Taipei topped the qualification in men’s Horizontal Bar at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup Doha at the Women’s Sports Committee Hall on Thursday.
The 27-year-old has been in great form recently after he picked up gold medals in Cairo and Cottbus events with his new routine. Chia-Hung will be hoping he can repeat the same performance in the final, which will give him one of the two tickets on offer for the Paris Olympic Games.
The Doha event the final Olympic qualification tournament for apparatus specialists and will determine 20 newly-minted Olympians heading for Paris 2024. The two gymnasts with the highest points score on each apparatus capture a ticket to the Games, with the best three rankings points scores counting toward the final total. A maximum of one place per apparatus can be secured by the same nation.
Known as the ‘King of Cat for his rendition of the Yamawaki move, which involves a backward giant swing, a half turn, a front flip over the bar, and a regrasp, Chia-Hung tore his Achilles tendon in February 2023 during a simulated competition.
The injury prevented him from competing for about seven months, causing him to miss the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Belgium and the Hangzhou Asian Games. But Chia-Hung has recovered and is back to his best and looks set to book his berth for Paris games.
Lithuania’s Tokyo 2020 Olympian Robert Tvorogal also kept his Olympic chances alive as made it to the final after finishing sixth in the qualifications on Thursday.
Kazakstan’s Milad Karimi, one of the favourites to win a medal here, accumulated 14.466 points to finish second behind Chia-Hung. Cyrpus’ Marios Georgiou, Arthur Barajas (Colombia), Isaac Nunez (Mexico), 2019 World champion Arthur Mariano (Brazil) and compatriot Caio Souza also made it to the eight-man finals.
In the parallel bars, Uzbekistan’s Rasulijon Abdurakhimov and local favourite and former world champion Carlos Yulo of the Philippines qualified for the final along with Karim and Yuan-Hsi Hung of Chinese Taipei.
Brazilian duo Diogo Soares and Caio Souza and Italian duo Lay Gianni and Nocolo Mozzato also secured berths among the top-eight finishers.
Armenia’s Artur Davtyan and Yulo made it to the finals in the vault event. Davtyan had a perfect landing on both his turns to accumulate 15.116 points, followed by Yulo’s 14.966.
Others to qualify were Audrys Nin Reyes (Dominica), James Bacueti (Australia), Noccolo Vannucchi (Italy), Chen Chun NG (Malaysia), Aurel Benovic (Croatia) and Yahor Sharamkou. Both Benovic and Bacueti are still in the race for an Olympic berth.
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