What were the compulsory routines for the Olympic Games in Helsinki?
At the time, the compulsories changed every two years. So, the compulsory routines in Helsinki were different from those prescribed for the 1950 World Championships in Basel.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there aren’t videos of the routines on YouTube. But in this post, you can find the drawings and French text for both the men’s and women’s compulsories.
In 1952, there wasn’t a Code of Points for women’s artistic gymnastics. The “program” established the rules for participants and judges alike.
It was a different time. While flying rings disappeared after the 1950 World Championships, ensemble routines with portable hand apparatus remained. Those were done to music, but women’s individual floor exercise was performed in silence. Since deductions were not enumerated in the “program,” there was a two-day training course for all judges prior to the competition, and competitors had to rely on their countries’ judges to inform them about how their routines would be evaluated.
Let’s take a look at some of the rules…
The Helsinki Games were the first Olympics that used an official Code of Points for men’s gymnastics. (The 1950 World Championships had used the 1949 Code of Points, as well.) But not everything could be covered in the extremely short Code of Points. As a result, the program for gymnastics in Helsinki included an additional 24 pages of rules for the men’s competition. Let’s take a look at some of the rules in place.
It’s important to document the floor music used at major gymnastics competitions. It tells us a lot about the general cultural zeitgeist in the world, as well as what gymnasts and their coaches think the judges will or will not like.
Here are a few trends that emerged this year.
What’s it like to try to defend your Olympic all-around title? At the time of this writing, only two female gymnasts have done it: Larisa Latynina (1956, 1960) and Věra Čáslavská (1964, 1968). Many are betting that Simone Biles will become the third.
Below, I’ve translated a portion of Čáslavská’s The Road to Olympus (1972), in which Čáslavská recalled her quest to defend her all-around title in Mexico City. She discussed everything from the inane questions of journalists to rivalries to intimidation tactics to nerves to bad lighting in arenas to difficulty adjusting to the bars during podium training.
Enjoy this excerpt from her book!
If you’re reading this site, you’re. a gym nerd at heart. Now, it’s time to see just how much of a gym nerd you are. Take the quiz below to find out.
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.
What follows is a translation of the article.
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 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.
At the end of Japan’s Official Report on the 1972 Olympics, the authors included a section that looked toward the future. They pinpointed areas where the Japanese men’s team needed to improve to stay ahead of the Soviet team, and they were hopeful because Kaneko Akitomo was part of the Technical Committee. Previously, they had felt at a geographic and linguistic disadvantage presumably because Japan is outside of Europe and Japanese is not a primary language of the FIG.
As for the women, the authors believed that Japan needed to go back to the basics and start over again.
In Voronin’s 1976 autobiography titled Number One (Первый номер), he reflects on his final Olympic Games. By his standards, he struggled during the Soviet competitions prior to the Olympics, and while in Munich, he injured his ankle. Arthur Gander refused to let him pull out of the all-around final, so he competed after receiving an injection that made him black out. (Note: Korbut also got an injection before the all-around final that caused her legs to go numb.)
In the end, the Soviet men’s team won two golds, three silvers, and one bronze. They had made progress in the two years between the Ljubljana World Championships and the Munich Olympics. But in the end, Voronin recognized that they were unable to put together a team that could match Japan’s team.
Here’s what else he said about Munich…
Note: Chapters of Voronin’s book were translated into Estonian for the newspaper Spordileht, and I have translated the text from Estonian into English. The following excerpts come from the February 8, 1978, February 10, 1978, and February 13, 1978 issues of Spordileht.