What were compulsory routines at the 1962 World Championships?
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there aren’t videos of the routines on YouTube. But in this post, you can find the English text for the men’s compulsories, as well as the English text and drawings for the women’s compulsories.
After the 1962 World Championships in Prague, Berthe Villancher, the President of the Women’s Technical Committee, penned a summary for the French magazine Éducation physique et sport (November 1962).
It’s a fascinating article, in which she calls the judges “combatants,” echoing something that Dr. Klinger wrote after the men’s competition at the 1934 World Championships.
You can find an English translation of Villancher’s article below.
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We’ve already discussed the men’s performances at the 1962 World Championships. It’s now time to discuss the women’s.
A quick recap: The event finals in Prague were delayed 30 minutes because the crowd protested Cerar’s score. They thought that Cerar of Yugoslavia should have scored higher than Shakhlin of the Soviet Union.
After a long conference, the judges raised Cerar’s score from a 9.8 to a 9.9, giving him the gold medal in the event.
Here’s a letter to the editor of the Modern Gymnast in response. It’s the one called “Subjective” at the bottom of the first column. (The letter about the judging “computer” is also fun.)
Since my first blog post started in 1962, let’s continue down the 1962 rabbit hole by doing a Cliffs Notes version of the 1962 World Championships for the men.
The first blog on this site starts in 1962 because some gymnastics fans want to burn down USA Gymnastics. In the unlikely event that happens, it would not be the first time that the national governing body for gymnastics would be overthrown.
In 1962, the United States Gymnastics Federation was formed in an effort to replace the AAU as the official governing body of gymnastics in the United States, and I thought that it would be fun to revisit that history.
What follows are Cliffs Notes. If you want to know more, check out A History of the Development of the United States Gymnastics Federation by Richard Edd Laptad. USA Gymnastics also has its own timeline here.