Horse Vault, Men

The format was the same as it had been from 1984-2004, with eight gymnasts advancing from the team all-around, but no more than two per nation. The favorite was Romania’s Marian Drăgulescu, three-time World Champion, and the 2004 Olympic bronze medalist. He led the qualifying and his first final vault scored 16.800, the highest of the finals. However he fell on his second vault, dropping him off the podium to fourth place. The top two were Poland’s Leszek Blanik and France’s Thomas Bouhail, both averaging 16.537 points, with identical execution and difficulty scores. Blanik won the gold medal based on his first vault of 16.600, which was a higher score than Bouhail’s best vault of 16.575, one of the many arcane tie-breakers in place in 2008.

Blanik was the 2007 World Champion, and silver medalist in 2005. Bouhail had no international placements as of 2008, but vault was his specialty, and he would win the next three major titles, the 2009 and 2011 World Championships and the 2010 Europeans. In December 2011, his career ended when he sustained an open tibia fracture, with knee ligament damage, and in injury to his peroneal nerve (a branch of the sciatic). His leg was at risk for amputation, but it was eventually saved, requiring 15 surgeries in six weeks to do so.