Olympic Track and Field 2016: Men's Long Jump Medal Winners, Scores and Results

The gold medal in the men's long jump at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro went to Jeff Henderson of the United States on Saturday night.

At 8.38 meters, his winning jump was one-hundredth of a meter longer than that of silver medalist Luvo Manyonga of South Africa. 

Here are the final results:

Medal	Athlete	Country	Jump (Meters)
Gold	Jeff Henderson	United States	8.38
Silver	Luvo Manyonga	South Africa	8.37
Bronze	Greg Rutherford	Great Britain	8.29

Heading into the competition, Henderson was an afterthought, given the big names that were vying for gold.

According to NBC Sports' Nick Zaccardi, Henderson finished ninth at last year's World Championships despite putting up the three best jumps of the year.

Only one medalist from the 2012 London Games was competing in Rio on Saturday night. But defending gold medalist Greg Rutherford of Great Britain has been the class of long-jumping since then, collecting two gold medals at the European Championships, one at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and one at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.

American Jarrion Lawson was expected to put on a good showing as well after he became the first athlete since Jesse Owens to win the 100 meters, 200 meters and long jump at the NCAA Championships in June. 

Lawson held the lead after the first round, which cut the field from 12 jumpers to eight, after he recorded a jump of 8.25 meters. He narrowly bested Rutherford's top mark by 0.03 meters. 

Rutherford was able to improve his best to 8.29 meters on his last jump of the finals to take the bronze.

He passed Lawson, though, who was unable to record a clean jump on his first two attempts of the finals, allowing Manyonga to take the lead with his impressive flight. 

But it didn't last long, as Henderson soared on his final attempt to a season-best 8.38 meters, which was 0.16 meters better than his prior top attempt of the night.

With Lawson pressing to get a good jump in, he could muster only a 7.78-meter mark on his final attempt, settling for fourth.