Career

In 2009, he successfully performed an extremely difficult new vault, a Tsukahara (1/4 entry in the first flight) on the vaulting table, followed by a full twisting double backwards salto in tuck position. The new vault is named after Ri. The vault is valued a 7.2 A-score, the second highest difficulty value in the world, with Hak Seon Yang"s vault being the most difficult with a start value of 7.4.

Ri competed in the 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and qualified first for the vault final.

He finished 7th in the final after a fall on his first vault and going out of bounds on his second vault, with an average score of 15.650.

Achievements

• He won a bronze medal on vault at the 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. He was the first North Korean ever to win a gold medal on vault at the Asian Games, where he performed solidly at the 2006 Asian Games was the first one for North of Korea on that apparatus. In the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships held in Nanning, China, Ri defeated the reigning World and Olympic Champion Yang Hak-seon and won the gold medal.

Views

On November 1, 2015, Ri participated in the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and successfully defended his title.