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.
Before Nadia Comăneci’s and Nellie Kim’s perfect 10s at the 1976 Olympic Games, there was a long line of gymnasts who obtained perfect scores at the Olympic Games, the World Championships, or the European Championships. (Originally, the World Championships were called the International Tournament.)
Some of them even managed perfect totals, meaning that they received the maximum score for their compulsory and optional routines combined.
So, here’s a chronological list of the gymnasts who were “perfect” before Comăneci and Kim.
Women didn’t compete at the International Tournament in 1907. (They wouldn’t compete at the World Championships until 1934.) But female gymnasts were part of the Fifth Sokol Rally in 1907.
Let’s take a look at their participation.
Flying rings? Track and field events like javelin throwing? If you’ve been reading this site, you might be wondering about the evolution of the women’s program at FIG competitions.
So, here’s a quick rundown of the women’s programs at the major FIG competitions. Here we go…
The women’s competition at the 1928 Olympic Games was solely a team competition. As was the women’s competition at the 1934 World Championships. As was the women’s competition at the 1936 Olympic Games.
At the 1938 World Championships, in addition to the team results, a women’s individual all-around champion was crowned for the first time at a major FIG competition. (Note: Previously, there had been individual champions at competitions like the Workers’ Olympics, which were unaffiliated with the FIG.)
Let’s take a look at what happened on June 30 and July 1.
In 1949, the Men’s Technical Committee published its first Code of Points.
Almost 10 years later, in 1958, the Women’s Technical Committee published its first Code of Points.
Of course, women’s gymnastics had rules before this. But this was the first official Code of Points, and as we’ll see, the rules for women’s artistic gymnastics had developed a lot since female gymnasts first competed at the Olympics in 1928.
Let’s take a look at the 1958 Code of Points.
At the 1934 World Championships in Budapest, women at the World Championships for the first time.
Only five women’s teams participated, but remember that only four men’s teams participated at the first International Tournament, the competition that would become known as the World Championships. (In fact, 1934 was the year that the International Tournament was renamed, becoming known as the World Championships.)
The format for the women’s competition was quite different from modern competitions. There were javelin throws, partner acro exercises, and national dances.
Here’s what happened on June 1 and 2, 1934.
Whereas men competed in gymnastics at the very first Olympic Games in 1896, women had to wait until the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the Official Report provides little commentary on the women’s competition — save for the results, the names of the athletes, and a photo of the French team climbing the double ropes.
But there were newspaper accounts of the events.
In this post, we’ll dive a bit deeper and look at two perspectives: that of the Dutch and that of the French. (The former was written for a general audience, while the latter was written for the gymnastics nerds.)
As we’ll see, there were some glaring issues that needed to be addressed in women’s gymnastics.
In 1928, women finally competed in gymnastics at the Olympic Games. Previously, they had been allowed to perform exhibitions, but they weren’t part of the competitive program.
The rules for the women’s competition at the 1928 Olympic Games were vague at best. After reading this post, you’ll probably have more questions than answers.
So, here are the rules…
In recent posts, we’ve talked a lot about the Swiss men, but we haven’t said much about the Swiss women. Even though Switzerland hosted the 1950 World Championships, the federation did not send any women. As the writer in Gazette de Lausanne noted:
The reason is that the leaders of our federation do not want to put our ladies in competition, considering that the latter is not reserved for representatives of the weaker sex. Are they wrong, are they right?
Gazette de Lausanne, July 18, 1950
La cause en est que les dirigeants de notre fédération ne veulent pas’ mettre nos dames en compétition, estimant que cette dernière n’est pas réservée aux représentantes du sexe faible. Ont-ils tort, ont-ils raison?
Intrigued, I looked into when and how the Swiss women were finally allowed to compete in gymnastics internationally. It turns out that the story is more complicated than it’s normally presented.
For starters, women’s artistic gymnasts from Switzerland had competed internationally before their supposed debut at the World Championships in 1966.
In fact, they had competed at an Olympics—just not the Olympics that you’re probably thinking of.
