The comeback "Pommel Horse Prince" Li Zhikai is not old and has reached the final of the 2025 World Cup Wana Station

At the 2025 Gymnastics World Cup Varna Station held in Bulgaria on the 8th local time, Chinese Taipei's "Pommel Horse Prince" Li Zhikai, who returned from injury, ranked third in the qualifying round with a difficulty score of 5.400, a completion score of 8.700, and a total score of 14.100 points, and successfully advanced to the final.

Chinese Taipei's "Pommel Horse Prince" Li Zhikai

Li Zhikai, who won the silver medal in the men's pommel horse individual at the Tokyo Olympics, failed to participate in the individual qualifying event at the Paris Olympics last year, and then underwent ankle surgery, rested and rehabilitated for more than a year before making his first comeback today.

A total of 29 people participated in the pommel horse at the Bulgarian Gymnastics World Cup Wana Station, and Li Zhikai tried a small knife with a difficulty score of only 5.400, but his performance was quite smooth, and finally ranked 3rd and advanced to the final. Another Chinese Taipei player, Hsiao Youran, ranked 10th with a score of 13.700 and missed the cut.

Li Zhikai's coach Lin Yuxin said in an interview with reporters on the same day that the game for 2 consecutive weeks is mainly used for testing, and will not require any goals to be achieved, after all, Zhikai has not had an official game for more than 1 year, and he was even a little nervous before playing today.

Lin Yuxin pointed out that now is a new point cycle, and all movements and difficulty must be tested slowly, so that international judges can see and even deduct points, so that they will know how to adjust in the future, "But in the finals, we will add a leg to the difficulty and raise it to 5.8 to see what the result will be." ”

Lin Yuxin emphasized that these two stations do not put pressure on the players, just make the movements of the test, there is no sports competition this year, and the focus is still on the world championships at the end of the year.

In addition to Li Zhikai, Chinese Taipei's Lin Guan Yi also entered the final in the men's rings qualifying round in third place with a difficulty score of 5.300, an execution score of 8.150, and a total score of 13.450. Coach Zheng Kunjie said that Xiao Youran's condition is still being adjusted, and although there was no mistake today, the action was still not in place; Lin Guanyi can be regarded as withstanding the pressure and performing well, it depends on whether she can play well in the final.