Taiwanese gymnast Tang Chia-hung clinches historic horizontal bar gold in Rotterdam

Taiwanese gymnast Tang Chia-hung secured the men’s horizontal bar gold at the Rotterdam Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, posting a 14.966 total that included the competition’s highest difficulty score of 6.600. He entered the final in second place after a 14.566 qualifying round with a 6.000 difficulty, then raised the routine’s complexity to outpace the other seven finalists. Although his landing was not fully steady, the score was enough for the title, making him Taiwan’s first world champion in gymnastics after earlier silvers by Chang Feng-chih (1993) and Lee Chih-kai (2018, 2019).

Tang said he reset his mindset after finishing fifth at the Asian Games, working with coach Huang Bo-rui and a sports psychologist, and treating the final as a practice run. He also highlighted the morale boost from his wife, Tseng Jo-yu, who arrived before the event. Tang expressed confidence about qualifying for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics at next year’s championships.