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.
In 1948, the men were one year away from having their very first Code of Points. Surprisingly, the technical committee didn’t simply copy and paste the rules for the 1948 Olympics into the 1949 Code of Points. The two documents look surprisingly different.
Let’s take a look at the rules that were in place for the London Olympics.
The London Olympics were only the third official Olympic competition for women. (Previously, women had competed at the 1928 and 1936 Olympics. There had been exhibitions at previous Olympics, and they had competed at the 1934 and 1938 World Championships.)
Needless to say, women’s gymnastics was still in a state of flux. So, let’s dive in and see what happened at this competition with rhythmic ensemble routines and flying rings.
Note: You can find out more about the rules and apparatus norms here.
1948 was a different time in women’s gymnastics. 15 points as the maximum score for optional routines. Flying rings. Ensemble exercises. No all-around competition.
Let’s take a look at the rules.
It’s no secret that Marie Provazníková of Czecholoslovakia was one of the first known political defectors at an Olympic Games.
However, what has been lost over the years is the context of her defection, particularly the role that gymnastics played in her desire to seek political asylum.
So, let’s take a closer look at her story, starting with the Sokols in the 1940s.
Even before the first modern Olympics in 1896 and even before the first World Championships in 1903, Czech gymnasts had proven themselves to be among the top teams in Europe.
Today, we’ll dive into one competition: the 1889 Fête Fédérale Française de Gymnastique (French Federal Festival of Gymnastics) in Paris.
This competition became a source of pride for the Czech and Slovak Sokols in the twentieth century.
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History is a matter of perspective, and, by extension, so are gymnastics results. As we’ll see, the women’s event finals were highly contested at the 1968 Olympic Games.
Let’s take a look at what happened…
On Wednesday, October 23, 1968, the Olympians in women’s artistic gymnastics competed in the optionals portion of the competition. As far as gold medals were concerned, there weren’t any surprises. The Soviet team was leading after the compulsories, and they ended up with gold. Čáslavská was leading the all-around after compulsories, and she won gold.
But the competition had its fair share of drama, especially on the podium. Let’s take a look at what happened.
Čáslavská’s beam routine during the optionals portion of the (1B) competition caused quite the stir.
Here are the basics:
There was a lot on the line. These scores counted towards:
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty and discuss how this one routine illustrated so much of the judging dysfunction that existed in the 1960s.