In January of 1961, a group of Soviet gymnasts headed to the United States for an extensive tour of the country. Months later, U.S. gymnasts headed to the Soviet Union for a dual meet in August of 1961. In a show of friendship, U.S. and Soviet gymnasts alternated routines. Rather than having an entire team compete back-to-back, a Soviet gymnast competed on, say, vault, and then an American gymnast competed on vault.
Speaking of vault, one of the main stories was a three-way tie for the women’s vault title, which produced a rather cramped podium.
L. Latynina, M. Nikolaeva, and B. Maycock photo: Pravda, August 25, 1961
In this post, you’ll find news coverage and videos of the trip.
In 1971, the Soviet gymnasts did a quick tour of the United States, competing at Penn State and Temple University.
10 years prior, in 1961, the Soviet gymnasts did a much more extensive trip. The women competed at West Chester, while the men competed at Penn State. On top of that, there were exhibitions across the country, including in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Urbana, Illinois; and a performance during an NBA game at Madison Square Garden.
The trip was arranged by the Amateur Athletic Union with the sanction of the U.S. State Department.
Below, you’ll find both U.S. footage, as well as Soviet and U.S. news articles. It’s interesting to see how the gymnasts were depicted in different publications and mediums during the Cold War.
Note: In the next post, we’ll look at the U.S. gymnasts’ trip to the Soviet Union for a competition in August 1961.
Sep 09, 1960, Rome Olympics, L-R: MARGARITA NIKOLAEVA, SOFIA MURATOVA, and LARISA LATYNINA.
In the penultimate chapter of his autobiography, Boris Shakhlin takes us from the 1958 World Championships in Moscow to the 1966 World Championships in Dortmund. Along the way, he gives us a glimpse into his tactics as a competitor — ways that he and his teammates tried to throw their competitors off their game. He also shares little tidbits of information. For example, did you know that Soviet athletes received one cake for each gold medal that they won?
Here’s a translation of the fourth chapter of Shakhlin’s book.
Left-right: Takashi Ono, Yuri Titov, Boris Shakhlin at the 1960 Olympics . 1960. Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano.
In the third chapter of My Gymnastics, Boris Shakhlin recalls his move to Kyiv, as well as his participation in the 1954 World Championships, the 1955 Cup of Europe, and the 1956 Olympics. Along the way, he tells some interesting stories:
How Yuri Titov learned to sing songs while doing pommel horse
How Viktor Chukarin survived a concentration camp during World War II
How the gymnasts burned their hands on high bar during the 1954 World Championships in the hot Italian sun
How he got the nickname the Russian Bear
How the all-around gold medal at the 1955 European Cup had a gymnast’s name pre-engraved on it (and it wasn’t his name)
How judging started during podium training — not on the first day of competition.
Shakhlin at the 1964 Olympic Games, source: Modern Gymnast
In 1973, Boris Shakhlin published his autobiography titled My Gymnastics. It is a blend of genres: simultaneously an autobiography, an advice column, and a history of Soviet men’s gymnastics.
In the first two chapters of his book, he recalls his start in gymnastics, being orphaned after the death of his parents, his tiny gym with a ceiling so low that they had to bend their knees to do giants, his journey to becoming a Master of Sport, and, of course, sneaking into the gym to train vault without his coaches. (Čáslavská snuck into her gym, too!)
What follows is a translation of the first two chapters of his book…
Right before the Mexico City Olympics, the Czech-language magazine Reportér printed a long interview with Věra Čáslavská. It covered a wide range of topics: her relationship with the media, her superstitions, her relationship with her coach, her first World Championships, and more.
At the end of 1967, Věra Čáslavská was on top of the gymnastics world. She had won the all-around at the 1964 Olympics, the 1965 European Champions, the 1966 World Championships, and the 1967 European Championships. In fact, at the 1965 and 1967 European Championships, she swept the gold medals, and in 1967, she scored two perfect 10s.
But how do you ensure that a golden gymnast stays golden? That was the question that the reporter Robert Bakalář posed to Jaroslava Matlochová, Čáslavská’s coach, in an interview published at the end of 1967.
Note: Matlochová would become a part of the Women’s Technical Committee in 1968.
After Čáslavská’s disappointment in her performance in Dortmund, she debated if she should take a break from competing. Perhaps she had become too familiar to the judges, one coach suggested. (At one point in this section, Čáslavská recalls how the overly familiar Latynina was ignored during a press conference with Larisa Petrik in 1965.)
To make gymnastics exciting again, she and her coach Matlochová reworked all her routines, adding new elements to every routine. They made practice fun, with Matlochová riding a broom and trying to distract Čáslavská during her beam routines. They set her routines and training cues to music.
Čáslavská went on to compete at the 1967 European Championships. But Čáslavská had her doubts at the beginning of the competition. After a rough bar routine during the first rotation and an exceptional performance by Kuchinskaya on beam, Čáslavská was unsure if she would be able to defend her title. But right before beam, one of her superstitions happened. Someone broke a glass, and she had her lucky shards of glass.
In the end, she became the only gymnast in the history of the European Championships to sweep all five events twice. She even scored two perfect 10.0s during the event finals.
Another interesting tidbit: For someone who ended up on top of the podium many times, Čáslavská disliked being on top of the podium. It made her feel awkward.
So, with no further ado, here’s how Čáslavská recalls the 1967 European Championships in her autobiography from 1972.
Note: You can read more about the 1967 European Championships here and here.
European gymnastics championships, Vera Caslavska being jockeyed, May 28, 1967, championships, gymnastics, The Netherlands
Even though Čáslavská won the all-around and vault titles, and even though the Czechoslovak team defeated the Soviet team, the 1966 World Championships were still a low point for her — one that she hardly remembers. When she returned home from the competition, she received many letters, some of which were hate mail.
What follows is a translation of The Road to Olympus (Cesta na Olymp), Čáslavská’s 1972 autobiography. Here’s how she remembers Dortmund…
Note: You can read the main article on the 1966 World Championships here.
(GERMANY OUT) Die tschechische Kunstturnerin Vera Caslavska auf dem Schwebebalken, aufgenommen bei den Kunstturn-Weltmeisterschaften in Dortmund am 24.09.66. . (Photo by Schirner/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
In 1972, Věra Čáslavská published her autobiography, The Road to Olympus (Cesta na Olymp). It provides a detailed recounting of her early days through the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
As a child, Čáslavská was a mischievous and funny child. Though a performer at heart, she struggled with stage fright until her mother helped her work through it, and as an adult, she came to see it as an asset.
Čáslavská started with ballet, then added ice skating, and finally found gymnastics. Initially, she trained under Czechoslovak gymnastics legend Eva Bosáková, and when Bosáková was away with the national team, Čáslavská used to sneak into the gym to train. Given her relationship with Bosáková, Čáslavská found it difficult to beat her mentor.
From the start, the international crowd loved Čáslavská. At the age of 16, during her first World Championships in 1958, Čáslavská wowed the audience in Moscow — so much so that the public demanded a performance by Čáslavská, even though she didn’t make the floor finals.
Below, I’ve translated sections of Čáslavská’s autobiography, tracing her early years in sports through to her first World Championships in Moscow in 1958.
