Gymnastics at the 2012 London Summer Games:

Picking a favorite in the men’s gymnastics floor exercises at the 2012 Summer Olympics was a toss-up between Kohei Uchimura of Japan and Zou Kai of China. Uchimura was the three-time World Champion in the all-around, the reigning World Champion and 2010 runner-up in the floor exercises, and a newly minted Olympic Champion in the all-around. Zou was the defending Olympic champion and twice runner-up (2009 and 2011) at the World Championships in the floor exercises. In the qualification round, Zou finished ahead of Uchimura by 0.067 points, after a slightly poorer execution of a more difficult routine.

In the final Zou was the clear winner, defending his Olympic title with a score of 15.933. With 15.800 points Uchimura tied Denis Ablyazin of Russia, who had the highest difficulty of 7.100, but the Japanese gymnast earned the silver medal by virtue of his higher execution score, 9.100 to 8.700. Enrique González of Chile placed fourth, a notable result for a country that had never before participated in men’s Olympic gymnastics, while Aleksandr Shatilov of Israel placed sixth, improving on his nation’s best Olympic gymnastics performance that he set in 2008, when he finished eighth in the same event.