Trampolining at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Trampoline is the “youngest” of the gymnastics disciplines in the Olympic programme, making its début in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. During Rio 2016, the Rio Olympic Arena (aka HSBC Arena) hosted artistic, rhythmic and trampoline gymnastic events. The venue was used at the 2007 Pan American Games, and stands as one of that event’s main sporting legacies.

The trampoline competition at the Rio Olympics consisted of a qualification round followed by a final. In the first qualifying round, the athletes performed a compulsory routine of eight simple skills judged only in execution - followed by two complex skills judged on both execution and difficulty. In their second round, they performed a voluntary routine, in which every skill was judged on both execution and difficulty. A time of flight score, an electronically measured record of actual time spend in the air, was the third component of both scores.

In both the women’s and men’s events, held on 12 and 13 August 2016 respectively, 16 athletes participated in the qualifying rounds, but only the top eight advanced to the final, where the athlete with the highest score (execution + difficulty + time of flight) won. If there were more than two gymnasts in same National Olympic Committee in the top eight, the last ranked among them would not qualify to the final round. The next best ranked gymnast would qualify instead. Two changes to the event since the 2012 Olympic Games are that the code of points had been changed with regards to the calculation of execution scores, along with the tiebreak rules for qualification.

Of the 30 medals awarded in this event since its début in the Olympic programme in 2000, China has won 11 with three gold, two silver and six bronze. Canada is second on the all-time medal list with seven medals – two gold, three silver and two bronze.