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1903 WAG World Championships

1903: Women’s Gymnastics at the First World Championships

Female gymnasts did not compete in the International Tournament or in the Belgian Federal Festival. But they did perform, and according to the newspaper reports, they were crowd favorites. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at those newspaper reports, as well as some of the challenges facing women’s gymnastics in fin-de-siècle western European society.

Note: I’m going to refer to it as “women’s gymnastics” in this post, but we won’t be discussing the performances of adult women. Rather, the gymnasts were typically young girls.

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1903 MAG World Championships

1903: Men’s Gymnastics at the First World Championships

I’ve covered the first Olympic Games in Athens. Now, it’s time to discuss the first World Championships, which were held in Antwerp.

First things first, the competition wasn’t called a world championship at the time. It was referred to as the International Gymnastics Tournament (“Tournoi International de Gymnastique” in French or “Internationale Turntornooi” in Dutch). The competition was held in conjunction with the Belgian Federal Festival, August 14-18, 1903.

The French team in La Vie au grand air, August 21, 1903; De Jaegher is the one on the high bar.

Note: I’ll refer to an article written by Pierre Hentgès, Sr. in this post. If you don’t know who he is, he was a Luxembourgish gymnast who competed at the 1912 Olympics. He later became the President of the Men’s Technical Committee of the FIG in 1954.

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1896 19th Century FIG Congress

1896: The Minutes from the Second FIG Congress

What did the FIG discuss at its congress in 1896?

Here are the extant minutes from the meeting — as printed in Le Gymnaste, December 12, 1896.

Note: It wasn’t called the FIG at that point, nor was it called a Congress. What transpired was a meeting of the European Federations of Gymnastics (Fédérations européennes de gymnastique).

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1896 19th Century MAG Olympics

1896: Gymnastics at the Olympic Games

Nowadays, we see the Olympic Games as the pinnacle of sports, and we have romanticized the first modern Olympics in Athens.

But, to understand the gymnastics competition at the 1896 Olympic Games, we need to set aside those notions.

By and large, the gymnastics community didn’t see the first Olympic Games as a glorious revival of an ancient tradition. In fact, most of the European gymnastics federations turned down their invitations.

Weingärtner
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1964 Code of Points

1964: The Women’s Code of Points

The 1964 Code of Points was the second Code for women’s gymnastics. You can read the document in its entirety at the bottom of this post. Otherwise, here are a few notes…

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1965 China

1965: Gymnastics at China’s Second National Games

In 1964, the People’s Republic of China did not compete at the Olympic Games, and the Chinese Gymnastics Association withdrew from the FIG. One year later, the country held its Second National Games, and the results make you wonder, “How would the Chinese gymnasts have fared at the Tokyo Games (1964) and the Dortmund World Championships (1966)?”

Let’s dive in.

Liao Runtian
Source: Wikipedia
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1964 China FIG Congress

1964: China’s Withdrawal from the FIG

In my post about the 1964 Olympic Games, I mentioned China’s withdrawal from the FIG. Over the holidays, I was able to find the official statement from the Gymnastics Association of the People’s Republic of China.

Below, you can find a translation, as well as the original in Chinese.

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1980 Gym Nerdery USSR

1980: Nellie Kim Chooses Her Fantasy Gymnastics Team

It’s the holiday season in my household, so here’s my gift to the gymnastics community: an article in which Nellie Kim chooses her ideal gymnastics team.

Here are the seven gymnasts she chose and why.

Datum: 25.07.1980 Copyright: imago/Sven Simon Nelli Kim (Sowjetunion); Nelly, UdSSR, Vdia, quer, Olympische Spiele Moskau 1980, Sommerspiele, Geräteturnen, Kunstturnen Moskau Turnen OS Sommer Damen Einzel Porträt Randmotiv Personen
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1948 MAG Olympics

1948: The Emergence of the Soviet Union

In 1948, the Soviet Union was invited to the Olympics, but they chose not to send any athletes. That same year, the Soviet Union attempted to join the FIG, and it was quite the fiasco.

In this post, we’ll take a look at a news report from the 1948 FIG Congress. In addition, we’ll look at a Swiss report on the Soviet appearance at the 1948 Sokol Fest, as well as what was being written about gymnastics in the Soviet press at the time.

Let’s jump in…

Helsinki. Finland. The 15th Summer Olympics. Soviet gymnast Viktor Chukarin.

Note: The Soviet Union had participated in international gymnastics competitions before their attempt to join the FIG in 1948, but those competitions were not FIG events. For example, they participated in the 1937 Workers’ Summer Olympiad in Antwerp, where the Soviet teams finished first.

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1948 MAG Olympics

1948: The Men’s Gymnastics Competition at the London Olympics

The men’s gymnastics competition at the 1948 Olympics was a bit chaotic, but by all accounts, it was an exciting competition between the Swiss and the Finnish teams. (Though, there were a fair amount of complaints about the judging.)

At the time of this writing, I have not found any extant competition footage. But the newspaper accounts paint a fairly clear picture of the competition and its controversies.

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