For Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai, his skillful performance of the challenging “Thomas flair” on the pommel horse at the Tokyo Olympics only made him want to perfect the routine further.
The 25-year-old won a silver medal in the pommel horse on Sunday, the first Olympic medal ever won by a Taiwanese athlete in gymnastics.
He nailed his 45-second routine, centered around the move named after late US gymnast Kurt Thomas, in which he skillfully maneuvered around the pommel horse on alternate hands while swinging his split legs in a continuous circular motion.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Yet the score it earned — 15.400 — was not good enough to prevent the UK’s Max Whitlock from winning his second consecutive Olympic pommel horse gold medal with a score of 15.583.
Lee’s 8.700 for execution was the best of any gymnast, even better than Whitlock’s 8.583, but his 6.7 for difficulty was 0.3 points lower than Whitlock’s 7.0.
“I did my best. I have no regrets,” Lee said after his performance. “Right now, I’m the 3.0 version of Lee Chih-kai, and I’ll push to evolve further by beating Whitlock.”
The defeat of the veteran champion would be the birth of “Lee Chih-kai 4.0,” he said, adding that he aims to achieve a Thomas flair maneuver the world has never seen.
As with any gymnast, Lee’s road to the Olympics has been rife with injuries, muscle pulls and general aches, evidenced by the tape covering several parts of his body.
There have also been tears, as seen in an award-winning 2005 documentary, Jump! Boy, featuring seven young gymnasts training in Yilan County, including Lee.
Recalling his more than a decade of training, Lee described the grind of repeating the same routines every day as “boring and demanding.”
However, it is his ability to endure that routine that has set him apart, he said.
“I’m not talented. I just grind more than others,” Lee said.
Born in 1996 in Yilan, Lee started gymnastics at the age of six, coached by Lin Yu-hsin, who is also the coach of Taiwan’s gymnastics team at the Tokyo Olympics.
Lee joined the gymnastics team of Gongzheng Elementary School in Luodong Township (羅東) when he started there as a first grader.
At first, training was not painful, he said, attributing his fondness for the sport to the “sense of achievement” he felt when a new move drew applause.
However, as the training got harder and more serious, physical and mental pain set in.
He and his teammates occasionally shed tears on a big pillar in front of the gym at the school, Lee said, adding that he would hug that pillar crying whenever his mother sent him to train.
He would actually pray that his mother would take him home because she could not bear to see her son in pain, but that never happened, he said.
Despite thinking of quitting the sport several times because of the pain, the harsh training regimen and the sense of frustration that came after failing to execute a routine well, he pressed on.
Lee was 20 years old when he competed in his first Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. There, he fell from the pommel horse, and at that moment “my brain went blank, except for the thought of wondering why my life was so painful,” he said.
In 2018, he completed a Thomas flair routine to win gold at the Asian Games in Jakarta, and he also bagged a gold in the pommel horse at the 2017 Taipei Summer Universiade and the 2019 Napoli Summer Universiade.
From the 1.0 version of Lee Chih-kai in Rio and 2.0 in Napoli to 3.0 in Tokyo, he has steadily improved, and earning an Olympic medal has only pushed him to strive harder.
The Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday downed the CTBC Brothers 2-1, handing the hosts their second consecutive loss in the best-of-seven CPBL Taiwan Series at the Taipei Dome. Monkeys’ ace starter Pedro Fernandez of the Dominican Republic dominated on the mound, cruising through six scoreless innings before giving up a run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning. He gave up only three hits and walked two batters in a 93-pitch outing, giving his Taoyuan-based team an edge. Offensively, the Monkeys’ leadoff batter Lin Li hit Brothers starter Brandon Leibrandt’s pitch over the center-field wall in the game’s first at-bat,
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
Marco Bezzecchi yesterday demolished the Australian MotoGP lap record in setting the standard during second practice, becoming the first rider ever to dip below 1 minute, 27 seconds at Phillip Island. The Italian, who won the Indonesia sprint race two weeks ago before slamming into world champion Marc Marquez during the grand prix, blazed around the waterfront circuit in 1 minute, 26.580 seconds on his Aprilia. His time shattered the previous best of 1 minute, 27.246 seconds set by Jorge Martin in 2023. Not content with that, he then bettered it with a sizzling 1 minute, 26.492 seconds. That left Bezzecchi 0.291 seconds
RSS