Equestrian

In the individual show jumping event Poland's Jan Kowalczyk and the USSR's Nikolai Koralkov beach had 8 faults, but Kowalczyk won gold as his horse completed the course the quicker. So Poland won the last of the 203 gold medals contested.

• Austrian horsewoman Elisabeth Theurer, despite the decision of the federation of equestrian sports of her country not to participate in the Olympics, was flown to Moscow by former racing driver Niki Lauda. Theurer won the gold medal in the dressage competition.

• The oldest medalist at the Moscow Olympics was Petre Rosca (Romania) in the dressage at 57 years 283 days.

Fencing

• Soviet foil fencers, who had taken possession of all the World and Olympic titles, were not among the 6 challengers in the finals. The Soviet 5 time world champion Alexander Romankov won a bronze.

• France took 4 golds in fencing, an Olympic record in the post World War II era.

• In the team sabre fencing final, for the 5th Olympics in a row, Italy and the USSR met. The USSR won as they did in Tokyo, Mexico and Montreal.

• In the men's foil final the USSR and France record 8 wins each but the Frenchmen made more hits and this won them the gold.

Football

Pins released by the USSR for the football event of the Olympics (with a British 50 pence coin for size comparison)

• The USSR were favorites to win gold in football but won bronze instead. Czechoslovakia won the gold medal beating German Democratic Republic (East Germany) 1:0 in the final. After many years in the doldrums, Olympic football had a revival in 1980 when the matches attracted nearly 2 million spectators.

Gymnastics

• Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin won a medal in each of the eight gymnastics events, including three titles. He was the first athlete to win 8 medals at an Olympics. He scored several 10s, the first perfect scores in men's gymnastics since the 1924 Paris Olympics.

• Nikolai Andrianov who had won gold on floor at both Munich and Montreal was pipped this time by Roland Bruckner of East Germany. Andrianov retained the vault title he had won in Montreal.

• Zoltán Magyar (Hungary) retained the Olympic title on pommel horse that he had won in Montreal. He was also 3 times World champion and 3 times European champion on this piece of apparatus.

• In women's gymnastics the USSR won 1 medal in the All-Around competition. In each Olympics before this they had always won 2 and in Rome 1960 had won all 3. In the Friendship Games at Olomouc '84 and at Seoul '88 they would win 2 again. In the Team Competition they won the gold medal for the eighth time, continuing the "gold" series started in 1952.

• In the women's gymnastics event finals, a Romanian gymnast medals on each piece of apparatus for the first time:

  • Balance Beam – Nadia Comăneci (gold)

  • Floor – Nadia Comăneci (gold)

  • Uneven Bar – Emilia Eberle (silver) & Melita Ruhn (bronze)

  • Vault – Melita Ruhn (bronze)

• In women's gymnastics there was a judging scandal when the Romanian head judge refused to post the score of her fellow Romanian Nadia Comăneci. This score gave Comaneci a silver medal behind Yelena Davydova of the USSR, but the Romanian judge, Mili Simionescu, tried to persuade the other judges to increase Comaneci's score so that she would win gold. After the Olympics, Simionescu was severely criticized by the International Gymnastics Federation. Before the Los Angeles Olympics, the United States gymnastics federation proposed a change in the rules so that a head judge cannot interfere and meddle in the scoring of competitors.

Handball

• East Germany beat the USSR 23–22 in the handball final to take their first medal of any sort in the men's event.

Field hockey

• Women's field hockey was an Olympic sport for the first time. Six countries competed: Austria, India, Poland, Czechoslovakia, USSR, and Zimbabwe. The gold medal was won by the team of Zimbabwe ahead of the firm favorites of the USSR who won bronze. Zimbabwe did not learn it would get a place in the tournament until 35 days before the Games began and chose its team only the weekend before the opening ceremony. None of their players had prior playing experience on an artificial surface. They had not trained at all together before the tournament and warmed up by playing some friendly matches with different Soviet club teams.

• India won a record 8th title in men's field hockey.

Judo

In Japan's absence, the USSR was expected to improve its showing in judo but wound up with 5 medals, the same as Montreal, despite the fact that there were 2 more weight categories. 15 countries shared the medals in judo, more than the record 12 countries in Munich and Montreal.

Modern Pentathlon

• In the men's Pentathlon Anatoly Starostin (USSR) became the youngest ever Olympic champion in this sport.

• 26 competitors scored over 5,000 points. In Munich 12 topped this mark and in Montreal 21.

• It was the 1st time ever at either a world championship or an Olympics that as many as 8 teams topped the 15,000-point level.

• In the modern pentathlon George Horvath (Sweden) recorded a perfect score in the pistol shoot. It had been achieved only once before, at the 1936 Olympics.

Rowing

• East Germany dominated rowing, winning eleven of the fourteen titles. The East German men won 7 out of 8 events, foiled from achieving a clean sweep by Pertti Karppinen of Finland (who defended his Olympic title from Montreal). East German women won 4 of their 6 events. The Soviets had been expected to win most of these titles considering their success at Munich and Montreal.

• The East German women's eights team win gold despite only having been selected 3 months before the Olympics began.

• In the rowing eights with coxswain the British team win silver just 0.74 seconds behind East Germany. The Britons had never rowed together before the Olympic trials and had only 10 weeks to prepare for Moscow. The stroke, Richard Stanhope, had never stroked on an 8 man shell before and in the final their steering broke.