Gymnastics

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Once an exercise for warriors preparing for battle, gymnastics has evolved into one of the most avidly followed Olympic events and a popular conditioning activity for all ages. Though male gymnasts are admired for their strength and skill, it is largely women's gymnastics that captivates audiences and inspires thousands of children to take up the sport.

Derived from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked, the combination of acrobatics and tumbling that we call gymnastics was devised by the Greeks as an exercise to balance the mind and body and learn skills useful in battle. Other ancient cultures, notably the Chinese, Indians, and Persians, performed similar conditioning exercises. It was in the early nineteenth century that the benefits of gymnastics were popularized in Europe when Friedrich Jahn established Turnvereins, or gymnastics clubs, all over Germany. American clubs in the style of Jahn's clubs were opened in Cincinnati in 1848 and in St. Louis in 1865.

By 1881 the European Gymnastics Federation was established in Belgium (renamed International Gymnastics Federation or FIG in 1921), and gymnastics became an Olympic event in 1896. Women's Olympic gymnastics began in 1928. Olympic events involve performing athletic feats of leaping, swinging, and tumbling on a variety of apparatus, judged on the basis of the Code of Points, established and regularly updated by the FIG. For men, there are six types of official apparatus: the floor exercise, the pommel horse, the still rings,the vault, the horizontal bar, and the parallel bars. Women do the floor exercise as well, along with the vault, the uneven parallel bars, and the balance beam.

Gymnastics underwent an enormous leap in popularity in the early 1970s. In the 1972 Olympics, Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut dazzled both judges and spectators around the world with her athletic and aggressive style, performing a back flip on the balance beam for the first time ever. In 1976, Romanian Nadia Comaneci became the first person in history to earn perfect scores for her gymnastic routines.

The dramatic performances of these skilled athletes and many others created a shift in perspective for women's gymnastics. No longer a demonstration of graceful motion juxtaposed with the male gymnast's display of power and strength, women's gymnastics became a powerful sport in its own right. With the new respect for women gymnasts came a surge in the popularity of gymnastics in the general population. In 1972, fifteen thousand amateur athletes learned acrobatics and tumbling at gymnastics clubs in the United States. A decade later there are one hundred fifty thousand, and the number continues to increase considerably after each summer Olympics. Whether it is Olympic hopefuls training to compete or children learning to tumble at the local community center, gymnastics has taken its place in American society.

With this new popularity comes a certain amount of worry. Competitive gymnastics can be a grueling sport, causing injuries to muscle, bone, and ligament. A 1990 study of Swedish male gymnasts found they had as many degenerated disks in their spines as the average sixty-five-year-old man. While male gymnasts reach their peak of performance in their late teens and early twenties, female gymnasts peak while they are still children of thirteen to sixteen, before bones and other bodily structures are fully formed. Some concerned trainers and parents refer to the "female athlete triad" of eating disorders, delayed onset of menstruation, and premature osteoporosis, which endanger female athletes who begin their careers at increasingly younger ages. It is not uncommon for young gymnasts to begin their training at age five and to work out for five hours a day by the time they are teenagers. Such demanding schedules combined with super-competitive coaching have pushed young gymnasts to injury and beyond. Small slips while practicing flips and leaps have resulted in several cases of paralysis, the most famous being Sang Lan of China, who fell in a practice session during the 1998 Olympics, breaking her neck.

In response to concerns about the physical and emotional effects of competition on very young girls, the Olympic Committee has changed its rules, making sixteen the minimum age for Olympic teams. Parents and many coaches have also tried to refocus the sport on fun and personal accomplishment and away from the intense competition that drives athletes to risk injury and permanent damage.

Gymnastics continues to grow more popular, especially among young girls, who find needed role models in the strong young women who fly so gracefully through the air at the Olympics. The parameters of the sport keep expanding. When Olga Korbut performed her back somersault on the balance beam in 1972, the move was revolutionary. In less than three decades, ten year olds could do it in gymnastics class, and elite gymnasts in competition perform three back flips in a row. Perhaps that is the real romance of such athletic displays: the ability of a vulnerable young girl to increase the limits of human physical achievement.

Kauffman, Helen, and Matthew Smith. "Well, Doc, Ya Ain't No Nadia Comaneci … (Gymnastics Is the Latest White-Collar Rage)." Los Angeles Magazine. Vol. 25, May 1980, 115.

Silverstein, Herma. Mary Lou Retton and the New Gymnasts. New York, F. Watts, 1985.

Smither, Graham Buxton. Behind the Scenes of Gymnastics. London, New York, Proteus Press, 1980.

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