Vault, Men

The men’s vault competition saw a very tight field of pre-event favorites. Ten different men had divided the medals at the past four international championships. Of these, Carlos Yulo and Artur Davtyan stood out. Yulo, the freshly crowned Olympic floor champion from the Philippines, had won gold at the 2021 Worlds and silver in 2022 behind Davtyan. The Armenian had also won bronze at the previous Olympics, while the top two gymnasts from Tokyo, Sin Jae-Hwan and Denis Ablyazin, were not competing in Paris. Another contender was Jake Jarman, the 2023 World Champion.

Jarman was the first of these three contenders to vault but, due to a landing penalty on the first vault, he failed to better his compatriot Harry Hepworth’s score. Unlike Jarman, Yulo then nailed his 6.0 difficulty first vault, landing his piked Dragulescu with great skill. A solid second vault sufficed to put him in the lead. Davtyan, who went last, produced two vaults of equal difficulty and execution. This put the Armenian ahead of Hepworth but did not challenge Yulo for the gold.

Yulo’s title was his second in the Games, after winning the floor exercise, and the second ever gymnastics medal for the Philippines. Similarly, Davtyan’s silver was Armenia’s second ever gymnastics medal, the first having been won by himself at Tokyo 2020. In seventh place was Mahdi Olfati, who was the first Iranian to compete in gymnastics since 1964, and the first to reach a final.