OLYMPICS/Gymnast Ting Hua-tien secures Paris Olympic berth

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) Gymnast Ting Hua-tien (丁華恬) has earned a spot in the balance beam event at the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a statement issued by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) on Monday.

Ting appeared initially to fall short of Olympic qualification after ranking third in the four-leg 2024 Apparatus World Cup competition series in the balance beam, in which only the top two secured Olympic slots.

However, the gymnast who ranked second in the balance beam in the World Cup series with 61 points, Laura Casabuena of Spain, also earned a spot in the floor exercise with 75 qualification points.

According to the rules, gymnasts who qualify for the Olympics in multiple events in the World Cup series can only compete in the one in which they have earned the most qualification points, and therefore, Casabuena vacated her balance beam spot and it was taken by Ting.

The 21-year-old Ting will be participating in the Olympics for a second time in a row.

She finished 50th and 63rd in the balance beam and uneven bars events, respectively, at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

Ting's coach, Tsai Heng-cheng (蔡恆政), told CNA that he was "relieved" to learn that he "did not mess up the calculation" of qualification points.

Tsai said he and Ting will try to add moves of higher difficulty to her routines in the three months leading up to the Olympics to give her a chance to place higher in Paris than in Tokyo.

Also on the list of qualifiers was horizontal bar standout Tang Chia-hung (唐嘉鴻), who won three of the four horizontal bar legs of the World Cup series to garner 90 points. Only the top three finishes in the four events are counted in the rankings.

One gymnast who did not make the cut is Taiwan's best known gymnast Lee Chih-kai (李智凱), who was the first Taiwanese gymnast ever to win a medal at an Olympic Games when he won silver in the pommel horse in Tokyo.

Lee failed to qualify during the World Cup series after finishing ninth in Cairo and a shocking 27th in Cottbus, Germany.

He won the third leg of the series in Baku and finished second in Doha, but his total of 63 ranking points (including eight from Cairo) were seven short of the 70 earned by second-ranked Nariman Kurbanov of Kazakhstan.

The Chinese Taipei Gymnastic Association said in a statement that it will try to secure an Olympic wild card for Lee from the FIG, even though, according to an association committee member, registration for wild cards closed in mid-January.

Lee could still secure a spot by doing well in the individual all-around event at the upcoming Asian Championships in May, but he is not strong in the all-around and after falling short in Doha, the 28-year-old told CNA he was "burned out."