OLYMPICS/On night of mishaps, Tang wins Olympic bronze on horizontal bars (update)

Taipei, Aug. 5 (CNA) Taiwanese gymnast Tang Chia-hung (唐嘉鴻) clinched a bronze medal in the horizontal bar at the Paris Olympics on Monday despite failing to catch the bar on a move and falling to the mat.

On a night when six of the eight finalists either failed to grab the bar during their routines or fell to the mat on their dismounts, Tang's score of 13.966 was good enough for a tie for third place with China's Zhang Boheng (張博恆).

Nicknamed Taiwan's "King of Cats" for his forte Yamawaki move, or vertical "cat" jump, Tang was the first of the finalists to perform, and he got off to a rocky start when he fell to the floor early in his routine before getting back up and completing his moves cleanly.

It seemed at that point that his medal hopes had evaporated, especially given that the lowest of the eight qualifying scores was a 14.366.

But except for Shinnosuke Oka of Japan and Angel Barajas of Colombia, the gold and silver medalists, the other five competitors all stumbled, keeping Tang in the competition.

Zhang could not keep his feet on the dismount after an otherwise clean routine, leaving him in a tie for third with Tang.

Both Tang and Zhang had a 6.5 for difficulty and 7.466 for execution, leaving them 0.567 points behind the 14.533 scored by both Oka and Barajas.

Oka won gold based on a higher score for execution.

Tang's coach Weng Shih-hang (翁士航) said before the horizontal bar event that the team had prepared for him to execute a routine with a difficulty of either 6.5 or 6.8 in the finals.

Tang ended up selecting the 6.5 routine, which, along with Zhang's, were the second most difficult behind Barajas' 6.6.