The exercise of rhythm and art

24 August 2008
The final two days of the Games witnessed the climax of the rhythmic gymnastics competition, with athletes from eastern Europe coming to the fore just as they did four years ago in Athens when Russia’s Natalia Lavrova became the first to win two gold medals in a women-only discipline that was added to the gymnastics programme in 1984.

Wooden leg
Artistic gymnastics competitions have been present at the Olympic Games since the very start. One of the most remarkable athletes of the St Louis Games in 1904 was American gymnast George Eyser, who won three gold medals, two silvers and one bronze – all with a wooden leg. His leg had been amputated after he was run over by a train.

Remarkable Larysa
LatyninaIn 1956 in Melbourne, the Ukrainian Viktor Chukarin earned five medals, including three gold, to bring his career total to 11 (seven gold), while Agnes Keleti of Hungary reached 10 medals by winning four gold and two silver. Eight years later in Tokyo, another Ukrainian, Larysa Latynina, brought her career total to an incredible 18 medals, which is still unbeaten, and, until Michael Phelps re-wrote the record books this year, Latynina was also one of only four athletes in any sport to win nine gold medals.

Olympic weddings
The 1964 Games also witnessed the first Olympic wedding, when Bulgarian gymnast Nikolai Prodanov and long jumper Diana Yorgova exchanged vows in the Olympic Village. It set a trend. In 1968, Czech gymnast Vera Èáslavská won four gold medals and two silvers and then, to the delight of 10,000 well-wishers, was married in Mexico City during the Olympic Games.
Korbut and Comãneci
Four years later in Munich, tiny Olga Korbut from Belarus captivated audiences with her cycle of success in the team competition, failure in the individual competition and renewed success in the apparatus finals. In Montreal in 1976, on the uneven bars, the 14-year-old Romanian Nadia Comãneci was awarded the first-ever perfect score of 10.0. She earned seven 10.0s as well as three gold, one silver and one bronze medal.
One record
Phelps couldn’t beatIn Moscow in 1980, Russia’s Nikolai Andrianov won five gold medals to bring his career medal total to a pre-Phelps men’s record of 15, including seven gold, while fellow Russian Aleksandr Dityatin earned a medal in every men’s event to become the only athlete in history to win eight medals at one edition of the Olympic Games – pre-Phelps. Finally, in 1992, Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus won six gold medals, including a record four in one day – and even Phelps didn’t manage that!
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