Comments on World Records

That's OK, I don't want to see rhythmic gymnastics. Even if the US was the favorite to sweep it, it's still lame.

I agree with your beam comparison, but the uneven bars - that old one looked pretty cool and inventive compared to what we see today. But anyway, GOOFY is right - the whole damn sport, especially that foward flip with quarter turn that Luikin did on the beam. Totes goof.

great post Annie!

I ignore gymnastics three years and 50 weeks out of every four years, and then for two weeks pretend I'm some kind of expert, but I agree that they're totally different. The only thing that distinguishes Nadia now is her confidence and lack of balance checks on the beam - her skills aren't that hard.

also, when was the decision made to put the uneven bars farther apart? that's made a huge difference in types of skills possible.

finally, go check out kim gwang suk on youtube if you haven't already. She was the north korean underage gymnast from 1992 and she has this crazy F move on the uneven bars.

You can see the uneven bars are much further apart now than in 1972. It appears that back then the point was how they transitioned from one bar to the other. Now they might as well just eliminate the lower bar and make it like the men's high bar.

Gymnasts got better, the routines got more daring because time marches on. When we were kids, my sister and I would watch Nadia and pretend that our own routines would include stunts such as standing on the top uneven bar doing 10 jumping jacks, doing a solo "Schleemel - Schlozzel" skip and dismounting into one of those Russian cossack dances the Fonz did. We also had an avacado-green rotary phone in our living room then.

@5... i thought those transitions were pretty cool looking.

Bah. Back when I was an Olympics gymast we did our pommel horse routines on a REAL HORSE.

@8: Funny you should mention that. The vault for both men and women used to look like a pommel horse without pommels. Now it's a "table" or whatever--totally different shape.

There is this thing called equestrian vaulting too--pommel like things and a blanket on a real horse. I did it at summer camp once.

Olympic gymnastics will continue to be tainted until they reinstate bull leaping.

"He hate me" -- unfortunately not a Luiken quote.

I think many of yesterday's champions might admit they did so well largely thanks to the athletes and trainers who came before them, who pushed prepubescent recruiting, training technique, nutrition, and corporate/state sponsorship as far as they could so the next generation could push it along further. Today He, Liukin and Phelps stand on the shoulders of Korbut, Comaneci and Spitz and their army of vintage coaches. A couple more Olympics, and other, even sleeker kids will stand on the shoulders of today's heroes, who will be thanklessly derided in turn.

And did anyone else catch Ron Judd's heartfelt pitch for Eric Heiden as an Olympic champion who accomplished way more than anybody on the scene today? Judd's logic was good, his writing was excellent, and Heiden was sooo cute and modest, turning down an offer to have his picture on the Wheaties box to preserve his anonymity. Plus, he had 27-inch thighs. Sigh.

Nobody's disparaging the gymnasts of yore. Well, I do feel the need to disparage the famous multiple medalist Larissa Latynina a little bit. Her backwalkovers were even ugly.

But I think women's gymnastics is getting fairly close to a difficulty ceiling, at least on some events. The difference between the difficulty of gymnastics in the 90s and 00s is minimal compared to the difference between the 70s and 80s—and that's in spite of a massive scoring change that rewards difficulty over execution.

Most Difficult - Nastia Liukin
Most interesting/Beautiful - Olga Korbut. She's the easy winner to my eye.

@12: I read it too and thought he made good points.

It would have been impossible for Korbut to do the same routine as Kixin as the uneven bars are now much further apart. (It doesn't just look that way because Kixin is only four feet tall.) The current dismounts would be impossible, since there is no room to do a rotation at more-or-less full extension.

No excuse on the beam, tho. And Nadia Comaneci is considered one of the pioneers of the more acrobatic style on that apparatus. Imagine how much the sport sucked in the 60s!