Individual, Men

Thirty-six athletes took part in the men’s event with a maximum of two athletes per country. The qualification points were added together from competition results between January and August 2015. Five continental championships afforded twenty places each per gender: one each from Africa and Oceania, five from Asia, eight from Europe, and five from the Americas with a maximum of one quota per NOC. Other athletes who qualified were the winner of the 2015 UIPM World Cup final plus the top three finishers at the World Championships in Berlin. Also qualified were the top three ranked athletes at the 2016 UIPM World Championships not previously qualified, plus the six highest ranked athletes not already qualified as per the world ranking list at 1 June 2016. Finally, the host nation, Brazil, had been guaranteed a single place each in the men’s and women’s events. Two wild cards were allocated by the UIPM.

The show jumping event opened up the competition with four athletes putting themselves out of contention because of repeated refusals. In international competitions, there are rarely more than two eliminations per show jumping event.

The eventual gold medalist Aleksandr Lesun of Russia won the fencing ranking round, collecting 268 points, whilst, sensationally in second place was Germany’s Patrick Dogue, only 28 points behind. Dogue then lost his chance when he finished a lowly 31st in the swimming event while Lesun, Ismael Hernández from Mexico and Britain’s Joe Choong moved up the leaderboard after good performances in the pool and in the show jumping phase. With the fifth best result in the combined running/shooting, Ukraine’s Pavlo Tymoshchenko won the silver medal, leaving the bronze for Hernández. Choong, one of the pre-competition favorites missed out on a medal and finished 10th overall after finishing a disastrous 28th in the combined, while the German Dogue surprisingly stayed in sixth place.