Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics

At the 2004 Summer Olympics, held in Athens, Greece, gymnastics featured three separate disciplines. Artistic gymnastics ran from August 14 to 23, trampoline from August 20 to 21, and rhythmic gymnastics from August 26 to 29. The Olympic Indoor Hall hosted artistic gymnastics and trampoline, while rhythmic gymnastics was held at the Galatsi Olympic Hall. In total, 252 gymnasts representing 45 nations took part.

For artistic gymnastics, the competition structure largely mirrored that of the 2000 Games. A qualification round involved all gymnasts, including those not on a team. Results from that round decided which teams and individuals advanced to further competitions. The team competition featured the eight highest-scoring teams from qualifications. For the first time, each six-person team could only put three gymnasts on each apparatus, and all three scores counted toward the team total. The all-around final included only the top 24 individual scorers from qualifications, with a new limit of two gymnasts per country. Event finals on each apparatus brought together the eight highest-scoring individuals, again with a maximum of two per nation.

Scoring controversies marked the gymnastics events. The most prominent involved South Korea’s Yang Tae-young. His team contested his parallel bars score after judges incorrectly identified one of his routine’s elements, leading to a start value of 9.9 instead of 10. The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the Korean Olympic Committee’s appeal, ruling it was filed too late after the competition ended and that there was insufficient evidence of corruption or bad faith to override the usual preference for a “field of play” judgment.

Another controversy arose in the men’s horizontal bar final. Alexei Nemov performed a routine with six release skills, including four in a row—three Tkatchev variations and a Gienger. Judges initially gave him 9.725, placing him third with several competitors still to go. This score was fair given a noticeable two-tenths deduction for a large step on landing. The crowd, however, became unruly upon seeing the result, interrupting the competition for about 10 minutes. Influenced by the reaction, judges raised Nemov’s score to 9.762, but his placement did not improve, and he finished without a medal.

These controversies led to a reconstruction of the scoring system, implemented in 2006.