00:00He entered the finals as the favorite to win, but as he attempted the vault,
00:04that's when everything fell apart. In a single moment, Paul Hamm plummeted from first place
00:10all the way down to 12th, and he was absolutely devastated. Up until that point, everything had
00:16been going perfectly. His floor routine was strong, his pommel horse routine was almost
00:20flawless, and despite a shoulder injury that nearly tore him apart on the rings,
00:25he managed to maintain his high score, staying at the top of the leaderboard.
00:28But when Paul landed awkwardly on his vault attempt, he lost his balance and he crashed
00:33into the judge's table, shattering his chances of winning gold. Paul's failure had opened up the
00:38top spot on the leaderboard for the South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young, who was performing the
00:43best he'd ever performed, and it seemed like Yang was now on track to win gold. However, Paul wasn't
00:49ready to give up just yet. He knew that he still had a chance of getting a medal, but his
00:53remaining
00:53two routines would have to be perfect. Paul launched into his parallel bars routine with
00:59intense focus, and as he completed each skill, it was starting to seem like the fall hadn't affected
01:04his confidence at all. And as he landed his final dismount, the American crowd went wild.
01:09It was the best parallel bars performance of his life, and Paul started to redeem himself. When his
01:15score came in, he was catapulted back up the leaderboard into fourth place. Not only that,
01:20but when Yang finished his routine on the parallel bars, his score came in uncharacteristically low,
01:25and he was dropped down to third place. Paul knew that gold was still likely out of reach,
01:30but now he felt like he had a real chance of getting bronze, maybe even a silver medal. However,
01:36as he went into his final routine, nobody was expecting what they were about to witness. The
01:40difficulty and flawless precision of his routine was unmatched, and Paul once again effortlessly
01:46executed every spin, every flip, and as he completed his dismount, the crowd once again went completely
01:59insane. And when the judges' scores came in, Paul rocketed up the leaderboard again. But where he
02:04landed, not everybody agreed with. Paul had technically won the gold medal, becoming the first US male
02:11gymnast to win the event. However, it was later discovered that a judging error had occurred on
02:16the South Korean gymnast's parallel bars routine. Yang had been assigned a start value of 9.9 points,
02:22rather than the full 10 points, as a result of the judges misclassifying the difficulty of his routine.
02:28The error cost Yang 0.1 points, and if his score had been calculated correctly, Yang wouldn't have
02:34ended up in third, he would have won the gold. But this was only noticed after the competition,
02:39so the results were locked in. South Korea ended up awarding Yang a symbolic gold medal,
02:45along with a $20,000 cash prize equivalent to that given to Olympic gold medalists.
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