Famous Female Olympic Gymnasts: 1928 - 2000 - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(From the book “The Encyclopedia of The Summer Olympics”, by David Fischer, 1963)

The first Olympic competition for women’s gymnastics occurred at the 1928 games in Amsterdam, Holland (a.k.a. the Netherlands).  The only event (at that time) was the team competition, which was won by the Netherlands.  In 1952, individual events for women on each apparatus were added.  The Soviet Union dominated the sport for many years, earning ten team gold medals, including eight consecutive team titles between 1952 and 1980.  The United States won four Olympic team medals – gold in 1996, silver in 1984, and bronze medals in 1948 and 1992. 

In 1996, American gymnast, Kerri Strug, supplied the most dramatic moment of the competition when she delivered an amazing performance (in vault) on a badly sprained ankle.   Strug, less than 5 feet tall and weighing just 87 pounds, felt a terrible pain shoot up her left ankle after landing short on her first vault.  She was about to pass on her second vault, telling her coach Bela Karolyi, “I can’t do it.  I can’t feel my leg.”  Her teammates, unaware of the severity of her pain, urged Strug to ‘shake it off’ and to attempt a second vault.  Despite the pain, Strug sprinted down the runway, performed the vault and the landing, and then fell to the mat in tears.  Her heroic vault earned 9.712 points to clinch the team gold medal for the United States.  Minutes later, with her leg in a cast, Strug was carried to the victory podium by her coach.

In 1956, Agnes Keleti (Hungary) and Larysa Latynina (Soviet Union) dominated the individual all-around competition.  Keleti had captured gold medals on three of the four apparatus events, but a poor showing on the vault cost her the all-around title.  Latynina, who won the competition that year, repeated her triumph in 1960 and took the silver in 1964.  During her career as an Olympic athlete Czechoslavia’s Vera Caslavska dominated the women’s all-around competition in 1964 and again in 1968.  In 1968, she won four gold medals in the vault, uneven bars and floor exercise.  All together, Caslavska won seven individual gold medals and four silver medals in Olympic competition.  Soviet gymnast Lyudmilla Turishcheva won the 1972 all-around championship, but she was overshadowed by her spunky teammate Olga Korbut, who earned three gold medals and a silver medal.  Korbut became the first person to perform a back flip on the balance beam, beginning a trend toward more athletic and acrobatic routines for female gymnasts.

The already popular sport received an additional boost at the 1976 games in Montreal, Canada.  Fourteen year old Nadia Comaneci of Romania became the youngest Olympic all-around champion.  (Today, gymnasts must be at least 16 years old to compete in the Olympics.)  Comaneci also became the first gymnast to score a perfect ten at the Olympic Games.  She earned her first perfect scores on the uneven bars and the balance beam in the team events.  By the end of the games, she had earned seven perfect scores and had walked off with three gold medals, a silver and a bronze.  At the 1980 games in Moscow, Russia, Comaneci missed first place by only 0.075 point.  That same year, she took the gold in the balance beam and floor exercise events, as well as the silver in the team competition, giving her an Olympic total of five gold medals, three silver and one bronze.

At the 1984 games in Los Angeles, United States, 16 year old Mary Lou Retton became the first American gymnast to win a gold medal in the all-around competition.  With two events remaining, Retton trailed Ecaterina Szabo of Romania by 0.15 point.  Retton earned a perfect ten on the floor exercise, thanks in part to a particularly difficult double back somersault that impressed the judges.  To win the gold medal, she then needed a perfect ten in the vault, which she did with style and grace.  Her full-twisting layout double Tsukahara – a maneuver that only a few men in the world could manage at the time – was perfect!  She had beaten her Romanian rival by 0.05 point.

At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, the all-around championship again came down to the final vault.  Russia’s Elena Shoushounova scored a perfect ten on her trademark, but risky, full-twisting vault to win the championship over Romanian Daniela Sivilas by 0.025 point, the closest-ever women’s margin of victory.   

Shannon Miller won more medals – five – at the Barcelona, Spain games in 1992 than any other American athlete.  She won silver medals in the all-around competition and on the balance beam, as well as bronze medals in the uneven bars and floor exercise.  Her fifth was a bronze medal for the team competition.  Miller then added two gold medals in 1996 to become the most decorated American gymnast ever.

The all-around competition swirled with controversy at the 2000 games in Sydney, Australia.  Officials had mistakenly set the vault 5 centimeters too low at the start of that event.  Because of this error, the favourite in the all-around competition, the former world champion from Russia, Svetlana Khorkina, took a bad tumble on the vault, which cost her the chance of winning the all-around medal.  After winning a gold medal in the uneven parallel bars final three days later, she said, “It will help me to forget that day.”

Addendum:  Since the 2000 games, there have been the 2004, 2008 and recently, the 2012 games.  Although these games’ results are not documented in this particular book, it has become obvious that women’s gymnastics has become more and more acrobatic and athletic in nature.  Vaults have more somersaults off the horse resulting in risky landings; routines on the uneven bars are filled with handstands, giant swings and multiple re-grasp moves; routines on the balance beam have many risky aerial elements; and, routines on the floor exercise contain very difficult aerial combinations.  The scoring system on each apparatus has also changed dramatically over time.  The ‘perfect ten’ is now a thing of the past.  If a gymnast is to win an event final or the all-around competition, she must deliver not only very difficult elements and sequences, she must also perform them flawlessly, or almost flawlessly.  Judging such performances has become very complex.  Only with experienced and expert judges can a realistic and fair score per gymnast be achieved in each event.

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.