Pommelled Horse, Men

As with all apparatus formats in 1960, this was a new format, with the all-around competition serving as a qualifying round for the final, with the top six performers advancing to the final round, where they again performed a compulsory and optional exercise to determine final placements. Borys Shakhlin won the gold medal but he tied for first and shared the gold with Finland’s Eugen Ekman. Ekman’s gold medal was the only one not won by a Soviet or Japanese male gymnast in Rome. The bronze medal went to Shuji Tsurumi, his only individual medal in Rome, but he would win two individual medals at Tokyo in 1964, one in this event and one on parallel bars. One surprise was that Yugoslav Slovenian Miroslav Cerar did not make the final, as he placed seventh in the all-around qualifying. He had been a bronze medalist in the event at the 1958 World Championships and would win Olympic gold on the pommelled horse in 1964 and 1968, and is often considered the greatest ever practitioner on this apparatus.