Horizontal Bar, Men

At Tokyo 2020, Daiki Hashimoto had claimed gold on the horizontal bar for Japan. He had also been the top performer in the interim, winning the 2023 World Championships and finishing second in 2021 and 2022. The title in these years had been won by Hu Xuwei (the Chinese wouldn’t come to Paris) and Brody Malone (USA). Other contenders included the Tokyo silver medalist Tin Srbić, World Champion in 2017, with silver in 2019 and 2023, and Su Weide, who took World bronze in 2023.

Hashimoto’s exercise in qualifying showed his typical aerial moves, but his landing failed completely, and he had to touch the floor with both hands, severely reducing his execution score to just 13.733, too low for a spot in the final. Malone had an even worse showing, missing the bar on one release, and stalling on another, and fell to 59th place. Su and Srbić did make the cut, as the leading score went to Zhang Boheng, silver medalist in the all-around.

The final was filled with errors. Zhang, Su and Marios Georgiou all had problems landing, while Srbić and Takaaki Sugino fell from the bar during their exercise. The remaining three gymnasts all reached the podium. All-around champion Shinnosuke Oka had the lowest planned difficulty of the field, but his 14.533 proved enough for gold. Ángel Barajas of Colombia matched the score but ranked second on account of his lower execution score. Chinese Taipei’s Tang Chia-Hung held on for bronze with 13.966, tying with Zhang who had the exact same score.

Barajas’ silver medal was the first ever gymnastics medal for Colombia, which made it only the second South American nation (after Brazil) to win an Olympic medal in the sport. For Oka, it was his third gold (after the team and individual all-around), making him (with an additional bronze) the top male gymnast at the Paris Games.