Russian gymnast Aliya Mustafina will add three medals from the Rio Olympics to her haul of Olympic hardware from London, finishing with seven total Olympic medals.
Her seventh came in the uneven bars final. Mustafina successfully defended the Olympic gold she earned four years ago, edging past 2015’s world co-champion Madison Kocian to claim gold. Mustafina scored 15.900, while Kocian earned 15.833 points to win the silver medal.
Mustafina is the second woman to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals on uneven bars. The first was Svetlana Khorkina, also a Russian gymnast, who won in 1996 and 2000.
The Olympic competition was especially heated because memories of the 2015 World Championships were still fresh. In that uneven bars final, four gymnasts received the exact same score. No tiebreakers were used, and all four received gold medals.
Of that four-person sorority, only Kocian and Russia’s Daria Spiridonova qualified for the bars final in Rio. Spiridonova missed a catch from the lower bar to the high bar and fell off, ultimately finishing 8th.
Rounding out the podium was Germany’s Sophie Scheder, who scored 15.566. It was Germany’s first-ever Olympic medal onthe uneven bars.
Gabby Douglas, three-time Olympic gold medalist, finished 7th after she struggled to stay on the high bar during a handstand. She fought through it to avoid a fall and finish cleanly, but her score of 15.033 wasn’t enough to get her onto the podium.
The final results were:
1. Aliya Mustafina: 15.900
2. Madison Kocian: 15.833
3. Sophie Scheder: 15.566
4. Elisabeth Seitz: 15.533
5. Shang Chunsong: 15.433
6. Jessica Brizeida Lopez Arocha: 15.333
7. Gabby Douglas: 15.066
8. Daria Spiridonova: 13.966