By Juliet Macur

c.2008 New York Times News Service

BEIJING — High above the arena floor where Jonathan Horton was about to unveil a dangerous and daring horizontal bar routine, his parents, Margo and Al Horton, held their breath.

Their son had told them to expect something extraordinary, so they braced themselves. For the Hortons, it was nothing new.

“Ever since he was a little boy, he’s always been doing crazy things,” Margo Horton said of her 22-year-old son. “He thrives on crazy things. In fact, he does better gymnastics when he’s doing crazy things.”

Indeed, Jonathan Horton, who has the energy of a hyperactive toddler and the guts of a stuntman, won an Olympic silver medal on the high bar with those crazy things.

Just three days before the Olympic final on Tuesday, he patched together a new horizontal bar routine, hoping to raise his score and put himself into medal contention. He added one risky release move, then upgraded another, lifting his difficulty mark by a half point.

The crowd at the National Indoor Stadium noticed. It roared each time his hands and his body twisted and flipped in the air, snubbing gravity.

Horton scored 16.175 points, just behind China’s Zou Kai, whose score of 16.200 won the gold medal. Fabian Hambuechen of Germany, the reigning world champion on high bar, won bronze, with 15.875.

When Horton landed, he looked at his coach, Mark Williams, and said, “Can you believe that just happened?”

Williams responded, “Dude, are you kidding me?”

Zou said Horton had been the best gymnast on the horizontal bar. He called Horton’s routine “stunning.”

In the days before, Horton’s competitors seemed stunned that he was performing the new routine in the first place. Preparing a performance like that for the Olympics usually takes months, not 72 hours.

“It pretty much went silent in the gym when I was practicing and everyone was coming up to us and asking, ‘Is he really going to do this?”’ said Horton, who was fourth in the all-around at last year’s world championships. “But I didn’t want to hold back. I didn’t want to have any regrets. I wanted to go big or go home.”

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Horton took a tiny step on the landing that might have cost him first place.

Instead, Zou left with his second individual gold medal. He had also won gold in the floor exercise.

On parallel bars, Zou’s teammate, Li Xiaopeng won gold, to match his gold medal in that event from the 2000 Games. The Chinese men swept the day’s competitions, again.

At these Olympics, they won seven of the eight medals awarded to men in artistic gymnastics. Leszek Blanik of Poland won the vault.

The U.S. men’s team ended up with two medals: a bronze in the team final and Horton’s silver. For a team that started the Olympics without its top two performers — Paul and Morgan Hamm, who were out with injuries — taking home those medals was a substantial victory.

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Horton’s was also a surprise.

“He’s always been kind of a riverboat gambler,” Williams said. “We took a risk, and it paid off.”

Horton’s mother said: “When he does these things, we’re always saying, ‘Oh my goodness!’ When he lands them, though, there is nothing more beautiful.”