"The Pommel Horse" Lee Zhikai made a comeback at the 2025 World Cup in Vana, Bulgaria and advanced to the final

Chinese Taipei's "Pommel Horse Prince" Li Zhikai took a break for nearly 1 year, and made a comeback at the 2025 Gymnastics World Cup in Vana, Bulgaria in the early morning of the 9th, ranking 3rd with 14.100 points and advancing to the men's pommel horse final.

Chinese Taipei's "Pommel Horse Prince" Li Zhikai

29-year-old Li Zhikai won the silver medal in the pommel horse at the Tokyo Olympics in the past, won the first Olympic gymnastics medal in the history of Chinese Taipei, and also completed the pommel horse 2 consecutive championships in Jakarta and Hangzhou Asian Games, but he missed the Paris Olympics after the 4 World Cups and Asian Championships last year, and at the same time, in order to solve the ankle injury that has plagued him for a long time, he decided to enter the factory for maintenance.

Li Zhikai took time to rehabilitate after the operation, first resumed physical training in October last year, and only put into pommel horse practice in November, and now he decided to return to the World Cup to "test the water temperature", but this time it took almost 30 hours to fly from Taiwan, China to Bulgaria, and then have to adjust the time difference, and adapt to the venue, which can be said to be non-stop.

The biggest purpose of this return to the international competition is to understand the new scoring criteria, after all, Li Zhikai used Thomas to play a slalom in the past, but in the Los Angeles Olympic scoring cycle, it is stipulated that the pommel horse can only have 4 Thomas slalom in the whole set of 8 movements, which also makes him have to start changing the whole set of pommel horse movements. Li Zhikai laughed and said that the movement of legs and legs was like "the most familiar stranger" to me.

After a long absence, the experienced Li Zhikai will still be nervous, especially during this period, there are many foreign players who care about his state, so that he feels full of attention, he is still engrossed after playing, the qualifying round is mainly to do a complete set of actions, with a difficulty score of 5.4, 8.700 execution points, and advanced to the final with 14.100 points, second only to the 17-year-old landlord Bulgarian player Rayan Radkov (Rayan Radkov) 14.200 points, Vietnam's 21-year-old player Dang Ngoc Xuan Son scored 14.850 points.