Horizontal Bar, Men

The only individual event the 2016 all-round and team gold medallist Kohei Uchimura qualified for in Rio was the floor exercise. He was expected to do well on the horizontal bars, on which he was the 2015 World Champion, but a costly slip saw him finish qualification in 37th place and he failed to reach the final. The silver medallist from the 2012 London Games, Germany’s Fabian Hambüchen, headed the list of qualifiers marginally ahead of Briton’s Nile Wilson, the 2016 European Champion, and the defending champion Epke Zonderland of Netherlands, who was also the 2013 and 2014 World Champion. America’s Danell Leyva, the 2015 World silver medallist, was taking part in his second event in just over an hour and a half, after winning silver on the parallel bars. Manrique Larduet, the Cuban bronze medallist at the 2015 World Championship, was also back in action after appearing on the parallel bars, as was Ukraine’s Oleh Verniaiev who was hoping to win his second gold medal of the day.

The first to go was the favourite Hambüchen and he lived up to that billing with a 15.766 from a difficulty rating of 7.300. Zonderland’s performance turned into a disaster when he lost his grip attempting a difficult combination and crashed to the floor face down, leaving him a defeated champion. He got back on the bars but finished seventh. Britain’s Nile Wilson moved into second place with 15.466 and the second US gymnast, Sam Mikulak, moved into third behind Hambüchen and Wilson with a 15.400. Verniaiev could not get among the medals this time and finished last, and it was not until the last man up, Danell Leyva, that the medal positions changed, as he ousted his fellow American Mikaluk from a medal and moved himself into second place with 15.500 to take his second silver within a couple of hours. It was Hambüchen’s first gold in four Olympics and it added to his bronze in 2008 and silver in 2012. It was also Germany’s first gymnastics gold medal since Andreas Wecker’s gold in the same event in 1996.