Uneven Bars, Women

With Simone Biles finishing a lowly 14th in the qualifiers, it gave a chance for somebody else to pick up an individual gold medal. Her US team-mate Madison Kocian was hoping to continue the USA’s clean sweep of the women’s gymnastic events. She topped the list of qualifiers for the uneven bars, but only 0.033 of a point ahead of the defending champion Aliya Mustafina of Russia, and with the other American Gabby Douglas not far behind in third. Another Russian, Darya Spiridonova qualified in fourth place. Spiridonova and Kocian were two of the four girls who shared an unprecedented first place at the 2015 Word Championships in Glasgow.

All the fancied gymnasts went off first but one of them, Gabby Douglas, disappointed with 15.066 points with a performance that saw her finish in seventh place. Mustafina was third to go and she set the pace with 15.900 from the highest difficulty value of 6.800 with a graceful and powerful performance. This was certainly going to be the mark to beat and Madison Kocian came up short by just 0.067 of a point, but was in the silver medal position at the half-way stage with four gymnasts to go. Germany’s Sophie Scheder put herself into the surprise bronze medal position with 15.566 and that is how it stayed as the remaining three girls could not better Scheder’s mark. The 2015 World Championship gold medallist Spiradinova ended in eighth and last place. For Mustafina it was a second successive Olympic gold and Russia’s first gymnastics gold in Rio.