In May of 1973, many of China’s top gymnasts traveled to the United States for a tour and a competition at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Meanwhile, back in China, the country held its national championships. On the men’s side, Yu Liefeng won the all-around, and Xu Guoning and Cheng Chunxia tied for first place on the women’s side.
Below, you can find an article on the competition.
于烈峰(右)获1962年世锦赛鞍马季军后与宋子玉教练合影
Yu Liefeng (right) took a photo with coach Song Ziyu after winning third place on pommel horse at the 1962 World Championships
In May of 1973, the Chinese gymnastics team traveled to New York City, where they competed against U.S. gymnasts at Madison Square Garden.
This was a big deal. I repeat: A big deal.
From a gymnastics perspective, the visit was part of China’s re-emergence in the international gymnastics scene. In 1964, China withdrew from the FIG due to the organization’s two China policy, and during the Great Cultural Revolution, Chinese gymnasts all but disappeared from international competitions. Then, in the early 1970s, Chinese gymnasts began to compete in smaller competitions. For example, they traveled to Romania in 1972.
But there was something different about this trip in 1973. Whereas Romania was a communist country, the United States was the symbol of capitalism. So, from a political perspective, the visit signaled the further thawing of U.S-Chinese relations and was further evidence of a pronounced shift in China’s foreign policy. (Previously, U.S. ping pong players had traveled to Beijing in April of 1971, and President Richard Nixon had visited China in February of 1972. More on that in the appendix.)
What follows are the results, as well as newspaper accounts from China and the U.S.
Note: If you’ve watched Gymnastics’ Greatest Stars, this is the competition where the Chinese pianist improvised after Nancy Thies’s tape broke.
The 1972 Chinese Nationals were the first major domestic competition after the Cultural Revolution. Launched in 1966 by Mao Zedong, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — in very broad terms — set out to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalism.
From a sports perspective, the revolution majorly impacted China’s national and international involvement. For starters, most of the national teams were disbanded. Gymnastics was an exception:
Apart from table tennis, gymnastics, and athletics teams, most national teams were disbanded.
Fong and Zhouxiang, “Sport in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)”
What follows is a translation of an article about the national championships in 1972. Unfortunately, the scores were not listed, but we can see which gymnasts would form the core of Chinese gymnastics as they started to compete in more international competitions in the early 1970s.
Reminder: The Chinese gymnastics team traveled to Yugoslavia and Romania before it held its first official national championships in 1972.
Among the juniors, you might notice a familiar name: Li Yuejiu, who tied for gold on floor exercise at the 1981 World Championships and who currently coaches in the United States.
In June of 1971, Nicolae Ceauşescu, the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, paid a visit to China and North Korea.
One year later, Chinese gymnasts went to Romania for a competition.
Note: We’ll see a similar timeline between the U.S. and Chinawith Nixon going to China in 1972 and Chinese gymnasts traveling to the United States in 1973.
While the Chinese men’s team defeated the Romanian team, the Chinese women were not as successful. After the competition, the teams held joint training sessions, during which the Chinese gymnasts learned the compulsory routines. Apparently, Cai Huanzong’s routines looked even better than the figures used to depict the compulsory routines.
Note: After Ceauşescu’s visit to China, he published the “July Theses,” which ended a period of ideological diversity and cultural liberalization in Romania. A list of banned books, for example, was reinstated. Academics debate the extent to which Chinese political thought influenced Ceauşescu.
Note #2: China withdrew from the FIG in 1964, so this meet was important because it showed that China was dipping its toes back into the waters of international competition after a long absence.
Months after Olga Korbut captivated the world’s attention in Munich, there was a national youth championship in Zaporizhzhia, and a familiar name — Nellie Kim — took second behind Raisa Bichukina, a much less familiar name to today’s gymnastics fans. (Kim was leading after the preliminary competitions.)
The path from junior elite to senior elite is never easy. Of the top juniors in 1972, only Kim and Grozdova would make the 1976 Olympic team. On the men’s side, several of the top juniors in 1972 would go on to have successful senior careers, including Marchenko, Markelov, and Dityatin.
What fascinates me about this event is the coverage. It raises hard questions: Was the nation in too much of a hurry to have young gymnasts competing on a major stage? Are they forcing gymnasts to compete too much? At the same time, the articles marvel at the gymnasts’ talent. The next generation of women’s artistic gymnasts was performing the most difficult skills in the world, including the same vault that Nikolai Andrianov competed in Munich.
Datum: 25.07.1980 Copyright: imago/Sven Simon Nelli Kim (USSR)
In January of 1973, shortly after the 1972 Chunichi Cup, Stadión, a Czechoslovak weekly, ran a profile of Karin Janz. In addition to a summary of her career, it included interviews with Janz, her father, and her coaches. Interestingly, it suggested that Janz intended to continue competing through the 1976 Olympics, which, in the end, she did not do. As the article noted, she was busy with her medical studies.
For her father, this was Janz’s greatest achievement: “It meant more to me than all her medals when she enrolled in medical school because she stayed true to her childhood dream.”
At the end of 1972, many of the stars of the Olympics headed to Japan for a series of competitions, including the Chunichi Cup. Not surprisingly, most of the competitors were not as sharp as they were in Munich. This was particularly true of the Soviet women who had to do a tour in West Germany right after the Olympics.
But the Chunichi Cup did give some gymnasts the opportunity to shine. For example, Nina Dronova, an alternate for the Soviet team and the Chunichi Cup champion in 1970 and 1971, took silver.
The competition also gave gymnasts the opportunity to try out new skills. U.S. gymnast Joan Moore added a back tuck to her beam routine, a skill that only Korbut and her teammate Nancy Thies competed at the Olympics.
Here’s a glimpse of what happened in Nagoya, Japan.
After the Olympics, Deutsches Sportecho, the main sports newspaper of East Germany, published an article about the gymnastics competition. Its general conclusion: There were no surprises at the Olympics. Everything happened as expected. The socialist countries dominated the women’s competition while the Japanese team dominated the men’s competition.
The article did offer a small critique of the judging in the women’s competition:
Judges are only human, and they valued the grace of Olga Korbut or the suppleness of Ludmilla Tourischeva more highly than the pronounced athleticism of Karin Janz – with the same difficulty and the same precision.
Romania skipped the gymnastics competition at the 1968 Olympics in part because of its disappointing showing at the 1964 Olympics. Four years later, in 1972, the Romanian women finished sixth, just as they had at the 1964 Olympics. The Romanian men finished 7th — a major improvement over their 12th-place finish in Tokyo.
After the Olympic Games in Munich, the Romanian press tried to answer the questions:
What should we make of the gymnasts’ performance in 1972?
Could our gymnasts have been achieved?
What needs to be done going forward?
What follows is a translation of a column from Sportul, published in the September 29, 1972 edition of the newspaper. The article looks at everything from body weight to the lack of good apparatus in the country.
Elena Ceampelea on the balance beam, June 10, 1972, The Netherlands
