Rings, Men

Two of the qualifiers for the rings final did not take part. France’s Samir Ait Said had qualified before breaking his leg in the vault and Yuri Van Gelder of Netherlands was sent home for breaching team rules regarding drinking alcohol. This meant that the 9th and 10th placed qualifiers were promoted and fortunately for France, one of them was Said’s team-mate Danny Rodrigues. The other replacement was Ukraine’s Ihor Radivilov. Neither of the two replacements were fancied to win a medal because there were a host of great champions making up his final.

The defending Olympic Champion Arthur Zanetti of Brazil was out to win the title again on home soil, and since the London Games he had won gold on the rings at the 2013 World Championship and 2015 Pan American Games. The reigning World Champion and 2015 and 2016 European Champion, Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece was also amongst the front-runners, as was the highest scoring qualifier Liu Yang of China. He was the 2014 Rings World Champion and the bronze medallist in 2015 - his team-mate You Hao was the silver medallist at the 2015 Worlds in Glasgow.

You Hao opened proceedings and chose a routine with the event’s highest difficulty of 7.000, but fell 0.400 points short of his qualifying mark with 15.400. A stunning performance by the World Champion Petrounias followed and it left the other athletes wondering what they had to do to beat his score of 16.000. Denis Ablyazin, a bronze and silver medallist in London 2012 on the floor and vault respectively, and the 2016 European rings silver medallist, moved into second place with 15.700 and then the second Chinese gymnast Liu Yang could only get himself into third place with 15,600. The leader board changed, however, after the last man, Arthur Zanetti, gave a great performance for which he received 15.766. He moved into second place behind the new champion Petrounias, the man who had the honour of being the first torch bearer after the Olympic torch had been lit at Olympia in April 2016.