00:00He entered the finals as the favorite to win, but as he attempted the vault, that's when everything
00:05fell apart. In a single moment, Paul Hamm plummeted from first place all the way down to 12th, and he
00:12was absolutely devastated. Up until that point, everything had been going perfectly. His floor
00:18routine was strong, his pommel horse routine was almost flawless, and despite a shoulder injury
00:22that nearly tore him apart on the rings, he managed to maintain his high score, staying at the top of
00:28the leaderboard. But when Paul landed awkwardly on his vault attempt, he lost his balance and he
00:33crashed into the judge's table, shattering his chances of winning gold. Paul's failure had opened
00:38up the top spot on the leaderboard for the South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young, who was performing
00:43the best he'd ever performed, and it seemed like Yang was now on track to win gold. However, Paul
00:49wasn't ready to give up just yet. He knew that he still had a chance of getting a medal, but
00:53his
00:53remaining two routines would have to be perfect. Paul launched into his parallel bars routine
00:58with intense focus, and as he completed each skill, it was starting to seem like the fall
01:03hadn't affected his confidence at all. And as he landed his final dismount, the American
01:08crowd went wild. It was the best parallel bars performance of his life, and Paul started to
01:13redeem himself. When his score came in, he was catapulted back up the leaderboard into fourth
01:18place. Not only that, but when Yang finished his routine on the parallel bars, his score
01:23came in uncharacteristically low, and he was dropped down to third place. Paul knew that
01:28gold was still likely out of reach, but now he felt like he had a real chance of getting
01:32bronze, maybe even a silver medal. However, as he went into his final routine, nobody was
01:38expecting what they were about to witness. The difficulty and flawless precision of his routine
01:43was unmatched, and Paul once again effortlessly executed every spin, every flip, and as he
01:49completed his dismount, the crowd once again went completely insane. And when the judges' scores came
02:01in, Paul rocketed up the leaderboard again. But where he landed, not everybody agreed with. Paul had
02:07technically won the gold medal, becoming the first US male gymnast to win the event. However,
02:13it was later discovered that a judging error had occurred on the South Korean gymnast's parallel bars
02:18routine. Yang had been assigned a start value of 9.9 points, rather than the full 10 points,
02:24as a result of the judges misclassifying the difficulty of his routine. The error cost Yang 0.1
02:30points, and if his score had been calculated correctly, Yang wouldn't have ended up in third,
02:35he would have won the gold. But this was only noticed after the competition, so the results
02:40were locked in. South Korea ended up awarding Yang a symbolic gold medal, along with a $20,000
02:46cash prize equivalent to that given to Olympic gold medalists.
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