Gymnastics at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's rings
This was the 13th appearance of the event, which is one of the five apparatus events held every time there were apparatus events at the Summer Olympics (no apparatus events were held in 1900, 1908, 1912, or 1920). Four of the six finalists from 1968 returned: gold medalist Akinori Nakayama of Japan, silver medalist Mikhail Voronin of the Soviet Union, bronze medalist Sawao Kato of Japan, and fourth-place finisher Mitsuo Tsukahara of Japan. Nakayama, Tsukahara, and Voronin (in that order) had comprised the podium at the 1970 World Championships. Liechtenstein, New Zealand, and North Korea each made their debut in the men's rings. The United States made its 12th appearance, most of any nation, having missed only the inaugural 1896 Games. Each nation entered a team of six gymnasts or up to three individual gymnasts. All entrants in the gymnastics competitions performed both a compulsory exercise and a voluntary exercise for each apparatus. The scores for all 12 exercises were summed to give an individual all-around score. (One gymnast who entered the all-around competition did not perform on the vault.) These exercise scores were also used for qualification for the apparatus finals. The two exercises (compulsory and voluntary) for each apparatus were summed to give an apparatus score; the top 6 in each apparatus participated in the finals; others were ranked 7th through 111th. Half of the scores from the preliminary carried over to the final. One-hundred eleven gymnasts competed in the compulsory and optional rounds on August 27 and 29. The six highest scoring gymnasts advanced to the final on September 1.
Results
The qualification and final rounds took place on August 27, 29 and September 1 at the Olympiahalle.