Olympic gymnastics highlights from uneven bars, rings, men’s vault finals

PARIS — U.S. gymnast Suni Lee won bronze in the uneven bars final on Sunday at the 2024 Paris Olympics. It’s her third medal of these Games, following team gold and all-around bronze. Lee also won bronze on uneven bars, her signature event, at the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour, 17, threw down a magnificent routine in the uneven bars final, scoring a monster 15.700 to win gold. China’s Qiu Qiyuan, 17, took silver with a 15.500.
The still rings final was the first event of the day, with China’s Liu Yang and Zou Jingyuan winning gold and silver, respectively, and Greece’s Eleftherios Petrouinas taking home bronze to round out the podium. The men’s vault final closed out the slate, with Philippines’ Carlos Edriel Yulo winning gold – his second of these Games – ahead of Armenia’s Artur Davtyan (silver) and Great Britain’s Harry Hepworth (bronze).
Simone Biles, who won gold in the vault final Saturday, returns to the competition floor on Monday with the balance beam and floor exercise finals.
USA TODAY Sports is bringing you live results, scores and highlights throughout today’s individual finals. Follow along.
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Suni Lee won the all-around gold in Tokyo, the biggest prize there is in gymnastics and, if we’re being honest, one of the most coveted titles at the Olympics. The medals she’s won at the 2024 Paris Olympics, including a bronze on uneven bars Sunday, mean even more. 
“I’m really proud of myself. This time around, it’s just been so much more amazing,” said Lee, who also has a gold she won with the U.S. women in the team final and her bronze in the all-around final. “I know I keep saying amazing and it’s probably really annoying, but that’s really all the words that I have because it’s just amazing.
“It’s so much fun and I’m so happy with all of my performances.”
Suni Lee is three-for-three in Paris Olympics. Lee won her second consecutive Olympic bronze medal on uneven bars Sunday, adding to the gold she won with the U.S. women in the team final and her bronze in the all-around final. She has a chance to add one more Monday, when she competes in the balance beam final. 
Lee was the last to go, and the only flaw in her routine was a slight step on her dismount. She looked happy with the routine, and when the score of 14.8 was announced, her jaw dropped. That put her just slightly ahead of Nina Derwael, the Tokyo Olympic champion. 
Just making the podium was an achievement in this uneven bars final, which looked more like a heavyweight fight. It featured the reigning Olympic, world and European champions, and everyone brought their best.
Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour, 17, was waiting to go when the score for China’s Qiu Qiyuan was announced. But if it flustered her, she didn’t show it. Her routine is jam-packed with difficulty — her 7.2 difficulty score is one of the few in the women’s competition above 7, and she added a tenth from qualifying — but she made it look effortless. She flits from bar to bar like a hummingbird and landed without a wiggle. 
Nemour scored a monster 15.700 and won gold. Lee walked over and congratulated Nemour after her routine. What a final this was.
China’s Qiu Qiyuan, who won the world title last year, was first up of the top contenders and did a gorgeous routine. Her pirouettes on the high bar would make ballerinas jealous, and she looked like a statue as she held perfectly still on her handstands. She was beaming when she finished and cried when her score of 15.5 was announced.
Here are the scores from the uneven bars final. 
An American woman has medaled in the event at all but two Olympics going back to 1992. The only outliers were in 2000 and 2012. Lee is the most recent medalist, winning a bronze in Tokyo. Madison Kocian (2016), Nastia Liukin (2008), Terin Humphrey (2004) and Amy Chow (1996) all won silvers, and Courtney Kupets (2004) and Shannon Miller (1992) won bronzes. The only American woman to win gold on uneven bars was Julianne McNamara, in 1984.
The Philippines came into the Paris Games having won one Olympic gold medal. Now Carlos Yulo has given his country two in two days. Yulo added gold on vault Sunday to the one he won on floor exercise Saturday. He finished with 15.116 points, ahead of Armenia’s Artur Davtyan, who earned silver with a 14.966 score and Britain’s Harry Hepworth, who got bronze with 14.949. 
Yulo wasn’t quite as overwhelmed as he was with his floor exercise, when he collapsed to the floor in sobs. He put his hand on his head several times, as if in amazement, but left the competition floor waving to the crowd and patting the Filipino flag on his chest. Gifts for Yulo poured in after his first gold medal. He was given, among other things, $173,000, a fully furnished condo, tuition credits and a lifetime supply of cookies. Imagine what he’ll get for two golds. 
Here are the scores from the men’s vault final. 
Winning an Olympic gold medal was so nice, Liu Yang did it twice.
Liu won his second Olympic title on still rings Sunday, defending his gold medal from the Tokyo Games. He finished with 15.3 points, edging teammate Zou Jingyuan by 0.67 points. Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece, the Olympic champion on rings at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, won his second consecutive bronze.
Petrounias finished just ahead of crowd favorite Samir Ait Said of France. The crowd roared when Ait Said stuck his dismount, and he pumped his fists in jubilation. But a couple of form breaks during his routine left him 0.10 behind Petrounias, fourth for a second consecutive Olympics. Here are the scores from the still rings final. 
No. Biles will compete again Monday in the finals for balance beam and floor exercise. She has won three gold medals so far in Paris, bringing her career gold total to seven and her overall medal count to 10.
Suni Lee went to Auburn right after winning gold in Tokyo, wanting to have the college experience and to compete at the NCAA level. She announced in November 2022 that she’d leave Auburn at the end of her sophomore season. Before that season could even end, however, Lee developed a kidney disease that caused her to retain so much fluid there were days she couldn’t even put on her grips. She returned to Minneapolis and began working with doctors at the Mayo Clinic, who discovered she was suffering from a second kidney ailment.
Thus began a nearly yearlong nightmare of tweaking medications and Lee feeling as if she had no control over her body. At one point, she said, she’d gained 40 pounds. There were days she could train and days she could only do certain things. Then there were days she couldn’t even get out of bed. By the end of February, Lee had returned to competition. It was an inauspicious start — she did only uneven bars and balance beam at Winter Cup and fell off both — but it let her know she could still do this.
Here is the remaining gymnastics schedule at the Paris Olympics after Sunday.
A gymnastics routine gets two scores: One for difficulty, also known as the D score or start value, and one for execution. Every gymnastics skill has a numerical value, and the D score is the sum total of the skills in a routine. The execution score, or E score, reflects how well the skills were done. A gymnast starts with a 10.0, and deductions for flaws and form errors are taken from there. Add the D and E scores together, and that’s your total for an apparatus. (Vault scores will always be higher because it’s a single skill.)
The U.S. women’s gymnasts will compete in these event finals.