Horizontal Bar, Men

Defending World Champion Arthur Mariano of Brazil failed to qualify for the 2020 final after finishing 12th, and Netherlands’ “Kovacs” routine specialist Epke Zonderland also failed to qualify. With Kohei Uchimura not qualifying, it left the door open for the new star of Japanese gymnastics, Daiki Hashimoto, the 2020 Olympic individual all-round champion, to win his second gold of the Games. Nikita Nagorny of the ROC was hoping to add a third medal to go with his team gold, and individual all-round bronze.

The pace was set by Nagorny, who was second man on the bar, and his 14.533 was going to be a challenging score. It was not until the sixth gymnast, Tin Srbić of Croatia, that anybody came close to Nagorny’s mark, and the Croat surpassed it with a 14.900. He held the lead briefly, because the next man up, Hashimoto, overtook the pair of them with 15.066 to win his second gold of the Games, in what was the closing artistic gymnastics event of Tokyo 2020. It was an error-strewn final that saw all but the leading three gymnasts, and America’s Brody Malone, fall from the bar.

Srbic’s silver medal was only the second gymnastics medal won by a Croatian since Filip Ude on the pommel horse in 2008, and in winning two golds, Hashimoto became the first Japanese gymnast since Koji Gushiken in 1984 to win two individual gold medals at the same Games.