7 Chinese gymnasts into World Cup final

BERLIN - All seven Chinese gymnasts who appeared on the first day of the FIG Individual Apparatus World Cup in Cottbus advanced into the final here on Thursday.

As one of the qualification series for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the World Cup started with a two-day qualification for the ten finals - six for men and four for women.

Weng Hao led the men's Pommel Horse qualification with the highest difficulty score at 6.6 points, followed by Oleg Verniaiev from Ukraine and American gymnast Stephan Nedoroscik. His compatriot Tan Di ranked fourth.

China's former world champion Liu Yang held a solid routine by hitting a total of 15.100 points on the rings. Despite stumbling on the apparatus, his teammate You Hao also earned another chance to prove himself in the final.

Gold favorite Fan Yilin faced a strong challenge from Russia's uneven bars specialists Anastasiia Iliankova and Anastasiia Agafonova. Agafonova failed to execute a clean routine between the bars, while her teammate Iliankova led the qualifications.

Yu Linmin, the 16 year-old Asian champion, rocketed to the top of the women's vault with 14.704, while Japan's Minami Kazuki nailed the men's floor with 14.866 points.

According to the qualification system for Tokyo 2020, each team may feature four athletes, plus a maximum of two individual athletes who are not listed in the team event.

Eight Individual Apparatus World Cup competitions will be held between November 2018 and March 2020, with the three highest results per athlete per apparatus being taken into consideration.