Individual All-Around, Men

Kohei Uchimura of Japan had won the last three World Championships, as well as silver at the 2008 Summer Olympics, in the men’s individual gymnastics all-around and was the favorite to capture gold at the London Games. After a fall from the pommel horse that nearly cost Japan a medal in the team competition and a disappointing ninth-place finish in the qualification round, however, some of his challengers were holding out hope that they could steal the crown away from the sport’s most recent star. Not a single medalist from the last three World Championships made it to the final (aside from Uchimura), which placed Danell Leyva of the United States, the reigning parallel bars World Champion, in the best position to dethrone Uchimura, having finished first in the qualifiers. With compatriot John Orozco finishing fourth, the Americans had a strong shot at a medal, if they could get past David Belyavsky of Russia and Fabian Hambüchen of Germany, 2008 Olympic bronze medalist and 2007 World Champion on the horizontal bar, who had qualified second and third respectively.

By about the halfway point of the event, it was clear that Uchimura was inching his way towards the gold medal and creating an ever-widening gap between himself and the rest of the field. By the end of the competition he had finished in first or second on four of the six apparatuses with a string of consistently strong performances that reminded the audience why he was three-time World, and now Olympic, Champion. Marcel Nguyen of Germany, who scored highest in both rings and parallel bars, came in second and won his nation’s first medal in the individual all-around since Alfred Schwarzmann and Konrad Frey won gold and bronze respectively in 1936. Leyva came up from behind, meanwhile, and scored top marks in the final two events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bars, to jump ahead and onto the podium, claiming the bronze medal for the United States.