Parallel Bars, Men

The defending champion from Tokyo on the parallel bars was also the clear favorite in Paris. Zou Jingyuan had skipped the 2021 and 2023 Worlds, but had claimed the 2022 World title, his third after 2017 and 2018, and with a large gap as he had in Tokyo. The runner-up in Tokyo had been Lukas Dauser, who had grabbed the 2023 World title in Zou’s absence. Two other former world champions also competed in France: Britain’s Joe Fraser (2019) and Ukraine’s Oleh Verniaiev. The latter was also the 2016 Olympic champion in the event.

As usual, Zou showed exceptional execution during qualifying. With 16.200, he was well ahead of the competition, with compatriot Zhang Boheng ranking second almost 0.9 points behind (15.333).

The final was opened by Illia Kovtun, who started with the most difficult exercise of the field: a 7.0 difficulty rating. His score was not approached until the sixth finalist, who was Zou. The scores for his exercise were a near carbon copy of his qualifying routine – 16.200. Dauser then missed several of his planned elements and saw his difficulty rating lowered to 6.0, ending up in seventh place. Verniaiev also struggled in his routine and placed eighth, which left the bronze for the all-around champion Shinnosuke Oka, who edged out Zhang – in the all-around, the order had been the other way around on this apparatus. The second gold for Zou in the event meant the Chinese joined a group of just three gymnasts to have won two gold medals on parallel bars, along with Sawao Kato (JPN) and Li Xiaopeng (CHN), but only Kato had also won back-to-back titles, in 1972 and 1976.