Gymnastics at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's vault

These are the results of the men's vault competition, one of eight events for male competitors in artistic gymnastics at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The qualification and final rounds took place on August 27, 29 and September 1 at the Olympiahalle. There were 111 competitors from 26 nations (with 2 of the 113 gymnasts not starting in this apparatus); nations entering the team event had 6 gymnasts while other nations could have up to 3 gymnasts. The event was won by Klaus Köste of East Germany, the nation's first victory in the men's vault (or any men's individual gymnastics event). The Soviets took silver and bronze, respectively, from Viktor Klimenko and Nikolai Andrianov respectively.

Background
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). Three of the six finalists from 1968 returned: gold medalist Mikhail Voronin of the Soviet Union fifth-place finisher Akinori Nakayama and sixth-place finisher Eizo Kenmotsu of Japan. The reigning world champion was Mitsuo Tsukahara of Japan, with Viktor Klimenko of the Soviet Union the runner-up.

Liechtenstein, New Zealand, and North Korea each made their debut in the men's vault. The United States made its 12th appearance, most of any nation, having missed only the inaugural 1896 Games.

Competition format
The event used a "vaulting horse" aligned parallel to the gymnast's run (rather than the modern "vaulting table" in use since 2004). 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 to qualify 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 113th. Half of the scores from the preliminary carried over to the final.

Schedule
All times are Central European Time (UTC+1)

Results
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.