Zou participated in the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, winning gold in the floor exercise and silver in the horizontal bar individual events, as well as a gold medal as part of the Chinese team.
Zou was the second Chinese Olympian to receive three gold medals at a single Olympic Games, following Li Ning who first achieved the feat at the 1984 Summer Olympics, and was the most successful Chinese athlete at the Beijing Olympics, with the most gold medal wins.
At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Zou led the team to win gold and later successfully defended his Olympic title at the floor exercise, winning gold again, only the second to do so in the men's floor exercise following Soviet Gymnast Nikolai Andrianov who won the event in 1972 and 1976. He was unable to defend his title in the horizontal bar however, finishing less than two tenths of a point behind the lead, eventually winning a bronze medal in the event.[5] The last gymnast to successfully defend his Olympic title on the high bar was Mitsuo Tsukahara, who won the event in 1972 and 1976, at the same Olympics as Andrianov.
With a total of five Olympic gold medals, Zou holds the record for most golds won by any Chinese athlete in Olympic history, and by adding a bronze medal to the tally, he tied the record for most medals overall, with six.
Zou, a Sichuan native, auctioned off one of his Olympic gold medals in 2008, donating all proceeds to fund relief efforts in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.[6] Out of the three gold medals he'd earned at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he chose the medal won for his floor exercise routine for its special significance since only two other Chinese gymnasts had ever won it, Li Ning and Li Xiaoshuang.
