A qualification system was put in place for the Munich Olympic Games. Countries had to achieve specific scores during a set period in order to participate in the Olympic Games.
Here were the rules guiding the process.
Category: MAG
At the 1961 University Games (also called the Universiade) in Sofia, Bulgaria, gymnastics was added to the program for the first time. It wasn’t a large competition — only 18 women and 28 men participated in the individual all-around competition.
But there were some big names, including 1960 Olympic gold medalists Mitsukuri Takahashi and Tamara Lyukhina, 1960 silver medalist Yuri Titov, as well as 1960 bronze medalists Sonia Iovan, Emilia Liță, and Elena Leușteanu. (There were other World and Olympic medalists at the competition.)
The events were split between two days: August 27 and August 28. The women competed on beam and floor on the first day and on bars and vault on the second. The men competed on floor, pommel horse, and rings on the first day and on vault, parallel bars, and high bar on the second day.
What follows are the complete results from the competition.
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1958: The Men’s Code of Points
In 1958, before the World Championships in Moscow, the Code of Points for men’s gymnastics was updated again. By and large, this version of the Code combined the 1949 Code of Points and the 1954 supplement in one single document.
That said, there were a few changes in the 1958 Code of Points. Below, you’ll find a summary of the major changes, as well as the original French text, as printed in the magazine Le Gymnaste, May 1958. Thanks to the Bibliothèque nationale de France for the documents.
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1954: The Men’s Code of Points
In 1949, the first Code of Points for men’s gymnastics was published. Five years later, in 1954, the document was updated.
The 1954 Code of Points was a supplement to the 1949 Code, adding more detail about the evaluation of men’s optional exercises. It specified:
- The breakdown of the 10.0
- The number of required elements
- The types of movements that should be included on each apparatus
- The difficulty levels of various elements.
- Note: the 1949 Code of Points included only a scale of difficulties for vault.
Assigning difficulty levels to elements was a request from the Soviet Union:
As the Russians proposed, a table of difficulties has been worked out, which can be used in Rome [at the World Championships].
Gazette de Lausanne, January 7, 1954
On a mis au point, sur proposition russe, une table des difficultés qui pourra être utilisée à Rome.
So, here’s a summary of the 1954 Code of Points, as well as the original French text, as printed in the magazine Le Gymnaste, May 1955. Thanks to the Bibliothèque nationale de France for providing the documents.
North Korea was supposed to participate in the 1970 World Championships, but the team did not show. So, prior to the Munich Olympics, the gymnastics world did not know much about North Korean gymnasts. A 1971 dual meet with East Germany was one of the DPRK’s few international appearances.
What follows are the results and an article about the competition. Reportedly, Kim Song Zu performed a triple twist off rings.
Note: This competition was referenced repeatedly in East Germany’s coverage of the 1972 Olympic Games.
Many expectations are foisted on the children of Olympic gold medalists. Albert Azaryan’s son, Eduard, was no exception. Already in 1970, there were media stories about Azaryan’s 11-year-old son.
Albert Azaryan was best known for his performances on rings, an event he won at the 1954 World Championships, the 1955 European Championships, the 1956 Olympic Games, the 1958 World Championships, and the 1960 Olympic Games.
Though Eduard did not end up winning as many major titles as his father, he was part of the Soviet team that won silver at the 1978 World Championships and gold at the 1980 Olympic Games.
Here’s an article from 1970 on the father-son duo.
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1970: The Czechoslovak Championships
1970 was a time of change for the Czechoslovak women’s team. The majority of the gymnasts who won gold at the 1966 World Championships had retired, including Čáslavská. Several of their coaches had also left. Luděk Martschini was coaching the Swiss women’s team, and long-time head coach Jaroslava Matlochová was coaching in Italy.
For the Czechoslovak men, there was some optimism ahead of the World Championships in Ljubljana. After the team finished fourth at the Mexico City Olympics — just 0.05 behind the East Germans — there was some optimism. That said, the Czechoslovak team was going to put together a young, inexperienced team for the 1970 Worlds.
Here’s what was reported in the pages of Stadión after the 1970 Czechoslovak Championships.
By 1967, Miroslav Cerar had been a major player on the international gymnastics scene for nearly a decade. His first major international competition was the 1958 World Championships in Moscow, where he finished thirteenth in the all-around and third on pommel horse. He was 18 at the time, and as the 1960s progressed, he watched as many of his fellow competitors retired from the sport. In 1967, he was the last of the men’s artistic medalists from the 1958 World Championships to continue competing.
What follows is a translation of an interview that ran in Stadión, a weekly Czechoslovak sports magazine.
Note: The Mohicans were an indigenous tribe from the area that the present-day United States occupy. The title of this article comes from James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel by the same name, the last line of which is, “I have lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans,” referring to Chingachgook. Nowadays, the phrase “the last of the Mohicans” refers to the last survivor of a noble race. I recognize that it’s problematic to call a white European the “last of the Mohicans,” but I can’t go back and change the title of the piece.
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, both Voronin and the Soviet team took silver. In Voronin’s 1976 autobiography titled Number One (Первый номер), he underscores that 1968 was a low point for him:
Yes, the [1968] Olympics left a deep mark on me. The tension was huge. I fought the Japanese alone, without the support of my comrades, and the increased responsibility drained me of all my mental and physical strength. The pain of loss was so great and humiliating that it shattered my faith in my own strength.
Jah, olümpiamängud jätsid minusse sügava jälje. Närvipinge oli tohutu. Heitlesin jaapanlastega üksinda, kaaslaste toetuseta ja sellest suurenenud vastutus pitsitas minust välja kogu vaimu- ja kehajõu. Kaotusevalu oli nii suur ja alandav, et põrmustas usu oma jõusse.
And he places the blame squarely at the feet of Valentin Muratov, the head coach of the Soviet team at that time. To support his point, Voronin highlights the misleading overscoring at domestic meets, the bizarre line-up order that upset both Voronin and Diomidov at the Olympics, Muratov’s insults, and the failure to block Kato Sawao’s 9.90 on floor exercise, where Muratov was the head judge at the Olympics.
At the same time, Voronin does conclude that the Japanese gymnasts were better and that the Soviet team’s expectations were off. The USSR thought that they had caught up to the Japanese team, but in reality, they were far behind.
Note #1: You can see a Soviet clip on Muratov here.
Note #2: Chapters of Voronin’s book were translated into Estonian for the newspaper Spordileht, and I have translated the chapter from Estonian into English. The following excerpts come from the January 16, 1978, January 18, 1978, January 23, 1978, and January 25, 1978 issues of Spordileht.
Note #3: This section of Voronin’s book responds to criticisms found in the pages of Sovetsky Sport, the main sports newspaper of the Soviet Union. You can read the newspaper’s coverage of the Soviet men in Mexico City here.
Like many top gymnasts, Mikhail Voronin did not set out to become a gymnast. He liked soccer and hockey much more. When he was 13, one gymnastics coach looked at his body type and turned him away. But he caught the eye of his physical education teacher, Konstantin Sadikov, and that’s how his journey got started.
As you’ll see below, coaches are often the central characters in Voronin’s 1976 autobiography, Number One (Первый номер), which is understandable. After all, his coaches helped guide him to success, and there was a certain mystique around champion coaches in the international gymnastics community at the time.
At the same time, Voronin is building a larger argument: his career was often mismanaged, and the coaches surrounding him did not always guide him or his teammates in the right way. (This point will be further emphasized in the chapter on the Mexico City Olympics, which will be the subject of the next post.)
Note: Chapters of Voronin’s book were translated into Estonian for the newspaper Spordileht, and I have translated the chapter from Estonian into English. The following excerpts come from the January 11, 1978, January 13, 1978, and January 16, 1978 issues of Spordileht.
