Gymnastics originated in the ancient Olympics and returned in the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, according to CBS Sports. Men have been competing in Olympic gymnastics ever since. Modern gymnasts do not mimic the ancient Greeks' practice of performing this sport naked but do continue the traditional corporeal values of demonstrating upper body strength, musculature, elasticity, poise and equilibrium.
History
Ancient Greeks practiced more than 2,000 years ago. Men gathered at gymnasiums to exercise and discuss art, literature and philosophy. These men strove for symmetry between body and mind by pairing physical activity with intellectual stimulation. Because of its focus on the body, gymnastics fell out of favor, virtually unforgotten until the late 1800s. The first large, modern demonstration of artistic gymnastics took place during the 1896 Summer Olympics in Greece.
First Modern Games
Five countries participated in the 1896 gymnastics competition. The German gymnastics team dominated the games, taking home almost every medal. Events included rings, parallel bars, vault, pommel horse and horizontal bar. Some events have been added and removed from competition, including rope climbing and club swinging.
Women
The Olympics banned women from competing in gymnastics for the first 32 years of the games. It allowed women to compete in the artistic gymnastic games in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. The first female event was combined exercise, won by the Netherlands. The first women's gymnastic team from the United States competed in the 1932 games in Berlin. The women's gymnastics program eventually expanded to seven events and then stabilized at six events at the 1960 Rome games.
Olga Korbut stole the 1972 Munich Olympics with her powerful back flip to catch the uneven bars. This maneuver is now known as the Korbut Flip in her honor. She also was the first to do a backward flip on the balance beam, according to Olympic.org.
Fourteen-year-old Nadia Comaneci made Olympic gymnastic history when judges awarded her the first perfect score of 10 in the team compulsories at the 1976 Montreal games. Official rules now require contestants be at least 16 years old. Comaneci eventually married another Summer Olympic gymnastics champion, Bart Conner.
Types of Gymnastics
Conner and Comaneci practiced artistic gymnastics in their Summer Olympic competitions. The term "artistic gymnastics" emerged in the early 1800 to differentiate between the free-flowing styles of gymnastic exercise from techniques used in military training exercises of the time. All Olympic gymnastic events from 1896 to 1980 were artistic.
Rhythmic gymnastic events made their introduction in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Rhythmic gymnastics became a medal sport in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. This form of gymnastics incorporates traces of basic choreography borrowed from ballet, separating itself from other types of gymnastics by the lack of apparatus.
Gymnasts competed in trampoline events in the 2000 games in Sydney. There are two trampoline events: an individual competition for men and another for women. Contestants may perform forward and backward somersaults combined with full or half twists as elements of a routine.
Notable Gymnasts
In 1976, Shun Fujimoto performed a full-twisting double back dismount onto a broken kneecap sustained in an earlier event to help the Japanese team win its fifth consecutive team gold. Kerri Strug ignored her ankle injury during her vault to help the American team grab gold in 1996. In 1988, Marina Lobatch achieved a perfect score on every apparatus, narrowly winning the all-around competition that year.
Member Comments