The event was won by Paul Hamm of the United States, the nation's first victory in the men's all-around since the 1904 Games in St. Louis and second overall.

South Korea took two medals (the maximum possible under the new rule limiting finalists to two per nation), a silver for Kim Dae-Eun and a bronze for Yang Tae Young.

"[2] The Korean team contested Yang Tae-Young's parallel bars score after judges misidentified one of the elements of his routine.

However, as noted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as with many other sports controversies, (i) scoring the routine correctly initially may have affected the remainder of the competition and (ii) there were potentially other scoring errors that may have affected the results as well; thus, assigning who "would have won the event" but for the error is "something in the realm of speculation, not of certainty.

[3][2] Kim Dong Min of South Korea, one of the judges on the "B" panel (responsible for determining execution scores), spoke to Buitrago about Yang's start value immediately following the parallel bar rotation.

[3] The next morning, the Korean delegation sent written requests via fax to Stoica and to the President of FIG (Bruno Grandi) for a correction in the start value.

[3] On 22 August, the National Olympic Committees for the United States and Korea met with the IOC and proposed that gold medals be awarded to both Hamm and Yang.

[3] On 26 August, Grandi sent a letter, via the United States Olympic Committee, addressed to Hamm and requesting that he return the medal, including commenting that Yang was "the true winner" of the event.

On 21 October, the CAS dismissed the Korean Olympic Committee's appeal on the grounds that the appeal, coming after the end of competition, was made too late, and insufficient evidence of corruption or bad faith on the part of the judges was presented to overturn a strong preference for a "field of play" judgment rather than one made after the fact.

The reigning (2003) World Champion was Paul Hamm of the United States; Yang had finished second and Hiroyuki Tomita of Japan was third.