Power and grace
The gymnasts of the 1970s
The awe-inspiring power tumbles that Simone Biles performed at the 2016 Olympics went viral last year — far beyond the gymnastics community and even the sporadic once-every-four-years spectators like me. Yet even while the American dominance dazzled, comments about her ‘lack of grace’ reminded me of the gymnasts of days gone by, when gymnastics was like a ballet and its athletes tied their hair in coloured ribbons. Of course, the Olympic ethos is ‘higher, faster, stronger’, and the ‘new’ gymnastics is far more of a sport than it was in the early twentieth century.
While I cannot claim to have any gymnastic expertise, or even any real technical knowledge of gymnastics, it is still the sport that captivates me the most when the Olympics come round every four years. The combination of power and grace is captivating. And while perhaps nowadays gymnasts are forced to sacrifice grace for power, and early gymnastics hardly had any power to speak of, there is one era of gymnastics that will always trigger that sense of the perfect balance in my mind — and three gymnasts in particular that embody this the most, for me.
In the early 1970s gymnastics was very womanly and graceful, accompanied with balletic movements and lilting piano music played live beside the mat. This began to change after the 1972 and 1976 Games. The appearance of Olga Korbut, the ‘sparrow from Minsk’, and her daring skills in 1972 that wowed the world, followed by the technical superiority of Nadia Comaneci and Nellie Kim in 1976 marked a turning point in gymnastics, already a sport in constant flux (the Code of Points is reviewed every four years, with elements marked up and down). Ironically, while Korbut and her rivals brought in a new daring sense of danger into the sport, they were still expected to maintain the traditional balletic style. Here emerged their unique blend of power and grace, which many still consider the pinnacle of gymnastics.
The 1970s was the decade when Comaneci was the first to receive a perfect ‘10’ score in Olympic competition — something so elusive that the scoreboards could not display them and gave her score as ‘1.00’.
It was a decade of détente, when these gymnasts from the Eastern Bloc dazzled the Communist and the Western worlds alike. When Olga Korbut, the diminutive seventeen-year-old, burst into tears after making mistakes in her all-around uneven bars, it broke through that typical emotionless Soviet façade — she was human. It was a unique time, an era of hope and understanding, especially for women. Gone was the meek style of women’s gymnastics — they proved that a woman could be feminine and powerful at the same time.
While gymnasts like Ludmilla Tourischeva are iconic and cannot be left unmentioned, I have chosen these three women in particular for important reasons. Olga Korbut first, because she inspired the world with her impish smile and playful, daring moves. Nadia Comaneci, of course — her first score of 10 on the uneven bars was iconic, as was her reputation for being the ‘gymnast of perfection’. And Nellie Kim, whose intensity and dynamism as well as her beauty made her stand out from the impressive Soviet team.
These gymnasts were iconic in their respective Games; they stood out from the crowd, they performed ground-breaking moves that are still difficult or even banned today (including the infamous ‘Korbut flip’. They were also teen idols and media icons at the first two televised Olympics — every little girl across the world wanted to be Olga, Nadia, and Nellie. They retained the flawless grace of traditional gymnastics and pioneered the power of modern gymnastics despite the old-fashioned apparatus.
Undoubtedly, the skills of gymnasts today far outstrip that of those in the 1970s. Modern apparatus, medicine, diet, and physiotherapy has meant that athletes such as Biles can ‘add another flip’ to anything Comaneci could once do. (Vera Caslavska of 1968 had her training facility taken away from her when she spoke out against the government. She used potato sacks and logs to train for the Olympics instead) But the breath-taking daring of Korbut’s uneven bars routines, the soaring, flawless flips of Comaneci’s beam, and the fiery flamboyance of Kim’s vault? Those are timeless.
