The 1968 Code of Points was to be ready by May 1, 1968. Opening ceremonies for the 1968 Olympics were set for October 12, 1968. That’s not a lot of time to read the Code and adjust routines.
Thankfully, compared to the men’s Code, the women’s Code was much shorter. Let’s take a look at some of the most salient parts.
Compulsories: The bane of some gymnasts’ existence, and the bane of some judges’ existence, as well.
Let’s take a look at the 1968 men’s compulsories and how they were judged…
The 1968 men’s Code of Points exploded.
Gymnastics was quickly evolving, and the Men’s Technical Committee was trying to be more prescriptive on what they wanted to see and in which direction they wanted the sport to go.
I’ll do my best to give you the CliffsNotes version of a 194-page document.
In July of 1976, newspapers around the world reported that Nadia Comăneci scored the first 10 in Olympic history.
Nadia Comaneci, a 15‐year‐old Rumanian girl, scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastic history in the women’s uneven parallel bars competition.
New York Times, July 19, 1976
Nadia received a perfect score of 10.00 — the first perfect 10 in Olympic history.
The Daily Yomiuri, July 20, 1976
Unfortunately, what they reported was wrong.
Comăneci was the first female gymnast to score a 10 in Olympic history, but she was not the first gymnast to score a 10. (To be fair, information was much harder to come by in the 1970s.)
What was it like training in Japan in the late 1960s? How many hours did they train? How was the Japanese gymnastics system set up? Did they use spotting belts?
Let’s take a look…
What was it like to train in the Soviet Union in the 1960s? At what age did they start? What were their gyms like? What did their training manuals look like?
Let’s take a look at some documents from the archives to find out…
From October 15-19, 1967, Mexico City held the Third Pre-Olympic Gymnastics Meet. It was part of the Little Olympics. (Nowadays, we’d call it the Olympics Test Event.)
Almost all the stars of gymnastics competed. The most notable exceptions: Věra Čáslavská and Mikhail Voronin.
Let’s take a look at what transpired in Mexico one year before the actual Games.
Věra Čáslavská’s performance was the big news out of Amsterdam in 1967. But it wasn’t the only story.
15-year-old Karin Janz had an incredible international debut. In fact, she was just hundredths away from stopping Čáslavská’s gold medal sweep at the 1967 European Championships.
Let’s take a quick look at her performance…
The 1967 WAG European Championships are a crucial moment in the history of artistic gymnastics. Let’s take a look at why this competition matters…
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