Gymnastics at the 1936 Summer Olympics – Men's parallel bars

This was the sixth 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). Eight of the 15 gymnasts from 1932 returned: silver medalist István Pelle of Hungary, bronze medalist Heikki Savolainen of Finland, fourth-place finisher Mauri Nyberg-Noroma of Finland, sixth-place finisher Al Jochim of the United States, seventh-place finishers József Hegedűs and Miklós Péter of Hungary, tenth-place finisher Savino Guglielmetti of Italy, and eleventh-place finisher Frank Haubold of the United States. All but Guglielmetti had also competed in 1928. 1932 gold medalist Romeo Neri was competing in Berlin but did not contest the parallel bars. Switzerland had swept the podium at the 1934 world championships with Eugen Mack, Josef Walter, and Walter Bach.[3]

Austria and Romania each made their debut in the men's parallel bars. The United States made its fifth appearance, most of any nation, having missed only the inaugural 1896 Games.

The gymnastics format returned to the aggregation format used in 1928 but not in 1932. Each nation entered a team of eight gymnasts (Bulgaria had only 7). All entrants in the gymnastics competitions (Neri of Italy did not compete in the parallel bars) performed both a compulsory exercise and a voluntary exercise, with the scores summed to give a final total. The scores in the parallel bars were added to the other apparatus scores to give individual all-around scores; the top six individual scores on each team were summed to give a team all-around score. No separate finals were contested.[4]

The compulsory exercise was described in the Official Report:

Outer sidestand: With mixed grip frontal swing into a momentary support-lever, drop backward to somersault under the bars (basket) into hand hang, glide-kip into a balance support—lift the straight body (arms slightly bent) into handstand—twice ¼ turn backward through side-support with undergrip on the bar (i.e. a total of ½ turn left or right in the handstand)—forward swing with support-turn left or right, throw body backward on the upper arms, roll backward into a momentary handstand, lower to cross-support, underswing into upper arm-hang, swing-backward to swing-stem (rise) with ½ turn left or right (support-turn), swing backward into handstand with an immediate ¼ turn left or right into a side-handstand and straddle-dismount into an outer sidestand rearways, bending knees half deep and raising arms sideward, straighten knees and lower arms to the fundamental position.