James A. Riley
Published: August 16, 2016, 2:43 am
Tags: News, Sports, Olympics
Three golds left: Preview the last day of gymnastics event finals
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The U.S. has collected five individual apparatus medals over the first two days of gymnastics event finals: Alex Naddour won bronze on vault, Madison Kocian won silver on bars, Simone Biles won gold on vault and bronze on beam, and Laurie Hernandez won silver on beam. They still have one day of competition left to go, with five more opportunities to make the medal stand. Watch live on Tuesday, Aug. 16 at 1 p.m. ET on NBCOlympics.com or tape-delayed in primetime on NBC.
Men's parallel bars
Four years ago, Danell Leyva won all-around bronze and was the only U.S. male gymnast to win an Olympic medal. He didn't get a chance to go for another podium finish in the all-around final in Rio, but he did qualify for two event finals, both of which take place on Tuesday. First, he'll compete on the parallel bars. He has two world championship medals on this event: gold from 2011 and silver from 2014.
It'll be tough to beat Ukraine's Oleg Verniaiev, however. He was the top qualifier to the final with a score of 16.166, and proved it wasn't a fluke by earning 16.100 points for his parallel bars routine in the all-around final (where he claimed silver).
The reigning world champion on the event, China's You Hao, will go into the final with an advantage over his competitors as his routine has the highest difficulty score.
Women's floor
After earning bronze on beam, Simone Biles will no longer be able to break the record for most gold medals won by a female gymnast in a single Olympics. But she can still tie the current record of four if she is her usual spectacular self on floor exercise. She's the three-time world champion on floor, was the top qualifier into the floor final by almost half a point, and hasn't made any major or even minor errors on floor over the last week and has the Rio-themed routine to get the Olympic Arena roaring.
Biles shared the all-around podium with Aly Raisman earlier in the week, and they're favored to go 1-2 again on floor. Raisman is the reigning Olympic champion. If she makes the podium, she'll receive her sixth Olympic medal.
Biles and Raisman were the only two gymnasts in the floor final with qualifying scores over 15 points, so the rest of the field will likely be fighting for bronze. Italy's Vanessa Ferrari, who won all-around gold 10 years ago at the 2006 World Championships, was the third ranked gymnast in the preliminary round. Switzerland's Giulia Steingruber could contend for her second bronze of the Rio Olympics.
Men's high bar
The event that looks like something out of the X Games when done by the sport's biggest daredevils will close out the Olympic competition. Danell Leyva will again be in the field, along with Sam Mikulak. Mikulak came to Rio with hopes of winning an all-around and team gold, but is so far empty handed.
After 2015 world champion Kohei Uchimura fell in qualifying and didn't make the final, the horizontal bar could turn into a dueling ground for the Netherlands' Epke Zonderland and Germany's Fabian Hambuchen. This will be the third straight Olympic high bar final for the close friends: at the 2008 Beijing Games, Hambuechen won bronze while Zonderland finished 7th. In London, Hambuchen improved to silver but it was Zonderland who claimed the gold and earned the nickname "The Flying Dutchman" for his routine with three big release moves in a row.
Neither man medaled on the event at the 2015 World Championships, with Zonderland not even making the final. The medals were collected by Uchimura, Leyva and Cuba's Manrique Larduet, who will compete in both the horizontal bars and parallel bars finals.