Rio de Janeiro, 13 August
An 8.38-meter jump on his last attempt gave the American champion, Jeff Henderson, the gold medal in long jump with a one-centimeter advantage over South African Luvo Mmanyonga, leaving the previous champion, British Greg Rutherford, with the bronze medal.
Manyonga, a 24-year-old athlete who no one counted on in the Olympic final, came close to causing a major surprise. The South African, who was the youth world champion in Barcelona 2010, achieved the best result of his life.
Rutherford had been on the verge of elimination on Friday, but finally made it with the tenth ranking jump of 7.90. He was saved by five centimeters.
The Briton once again demonstrated his competitive skills today, which he displayed four years ago on that glorious Saturday for British athletics at London 2012, when the team won three gold medals in one hour. Later, he became world champion, European champion, and Commonwealth champion.
Chinese Wang Jianan, only 19 years old, and Henderson, with their respective marks of 8.24 and 8.20, offered the best performances in the qualifying round.
In the final, Henderson set the pace from his first jump (8.20), which kept him in the lead for two rounds, but he started to lose positions as the competition heated up.
The battle heated up when Manyonga took the lead in the fourth round with 8.28 and improved in the fifth with 8.37 - a personal record - while Rutherford was out of the podium.
But in the last round, Henderson returned to the first place and Rutherford held on to the Olympic podium.
Uruguayan Emiliano Lasa, the revelation of Friday with his jump of 8.14 - third in the ranking - dreamed of giving his country its first Olympic medal in athletics, but ended up in a notable sixth place with a mark of 8.10.
Jarrion Lawson, the world leader of the year with his 8.58 jump that gave him second place in the US Championships - he beat Henderson with a wind-assisted 8.59 - could not make it to the podium and finished fourth with 8.25.