Floor Exercise, Men

None of the 2016 Rio medallists were present in the floor final in Tokyo. Israel’s Artem Dolgopyat led the qualifiers ahead of Nikita Nagorny. The reigning world champion, Carlos Edriel Yulo of the Philippines, was hoping to become his country’s first Olympic gymnastics medalist, but he failed to make the final after finishing 44th in qualifying with just 13.566 points.

The ROC’s Nagorny opened the final, which saw his new triple back pike, but a 0.3 penalty for stepping off the mat resulted in a score of 13.066, and he eventually finished seventh. Spain’s Ray Zapata, who ranked fourth in qualifying, took the lead after following Nagorny onto the floor and his 14.933 was never bettered. It was equalled by Dolgopyat, however, who had a few landings that were less than perfect, and he incurred a 0.1 penalty for landing out of the area on one of them. Because he had a marginally better D score, 6.600 to 6.500, than Zapata, after both men had identical E scores (8.433), Dolgopyat was in the lead. He had to wait while four more gymnasts took to the floor, including China’s Xiao Ruoteng, the individual all-round silver medalist, before he knew if he had won the gold medal. Fortunately for him, Ruoteng’s 14.766 put him in third place, which meant the Israeli took the gold medal and the Spanish the silver. It was Israel’s first Olympic gymnastics medal of any colour, and only their second ever Olympic gold medal after Gal Fridman won windsurfing gold in 2004.