Category: FIG Congress

In 1928, the 15th FIG Congress took place on August 6 in Amsterdam. It was the first meeting of the delegates after the death of Nicolas J. Cupérus, the man who led the FIG for 43 years. 

The minutes are fascinating because they show the struggle between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) to define the sport of gymnastics.

Is pole vault a gymnastics event or an athletics event?

In the view of the FIG, it was a gymnastics event, especially since it required the use of apparatus. (It was also part of Jahn’s seminal text, Die Deutsche Turnkunst, though that point did not come up in conversations.) But the IOC didn’t share the FIG’s view.

*Cue dramatic music.*

Reminder: Track and field events like pole vault were part of the World Championships (originally called the International Tournament) until 1950. Here’s a full list of events during the major men’s gymnastics competitions from 1896 until 1950.

There are pivotal moments in the history of gymnastics — those moments when the sport could have gone in a very different direction.

One of those inflection points was the 1909 FIG Congress. Not much was decided in 1909 because the attendees had wildly divergent views on competition formats.

One proposal called for blind compulsories. In other words, the gymnasts would attend a competition, where they would be shown the compulsories that they had to compete. They wouldn’t know beforehand what to practice.

Can you imagine? The history of gymnastics would look very different if that proposal had been accepted.

That said, not every idea was as wild as blind compulsories. For instance, there was a desire to form a permanent technical committee, which eventually happened decades later.

Which gymnastics federations should be allowed to join the Bureau of European Gymnastics Associations (now the FIG)?

How are the International Tournaments different from the Olympic Games? Should there even be an International Tournament? They are costly to run, and President Cupérus was originally opposed to the idea of gymnastics competitions.

These are some of the questions that the Bureau of European Gymnastics Associations had to answer during the 1907 Congress.

Do you wish that pommel horse weren’t a part of men’s artistic gymnastics? If Sweden had its way in 1950, the apparatus would be gone.

Do you wish that men would use floor music? Hungary and Poland wanted that to happen in 1950.

Do you wish that women still competed on flying rings? Well, you have several federations to blame for that.

Oh, and you have Hungary to thank for the size of today’s floor exercise.

Let’s dive into the details of the 1950 FIG Congress.

On November 6, 2021, at the 83rd Congress in Antalya, Turkey, Watanabe Morinari will face off with Farid Gayibov for the FIG presidency. 

When Watanabe was elected president, it was a big deal. Let’s take a look at what was said in the Japanese press at the time.

How much did it cost to be an FIG member in 1968? What was the FIG’s budget in 1968? Will Israel finally be approved to compete in the European Championships?

All that and more in the notes from the 1968 FIG Meeting.