Floor Exercise, Women

The format was the same as it had been from 1984-2000, with eight gymnasts advancing from the team all-around, but no more than two per nation. The 2003 World Champion was Brazilian Daiane dos Santos who qualified for the final but went out of bounds on her first tumbling pass and stumbled on her second. Her score of 9.375 would place her only fifth. Romanian Cătălina Ponor had won a gold medal on beam only a few minutes before, and performed brilliantly on floor to win her second apparatus gold medal. Her score of 9.750 gave her a 0.188 margin over her teammate Dana Şofronie, the largest margin of victory ever on floor exercise, and the largest at the Olympics in an apparatus event since 1976 when Nadia Comăneci won the uneven bars by 0.2 points. Spain’s Patricia Moreno won the bronze medal, the first Olympic medal ever won by a Spanish gymnast.