As I’m watching the women’s team all-around final, I remember an Olympic gymnast whose uneven bars routine had a controversial move in which she stood up on the top bar, did a back flip, and grasped the top bar again to continue her routine.
Am I remembering this correctly? What year was it? Who was the gymnast? Is there a YouTube clip? Is that move still controversial? I certainly don’t see anyone doing it now.
Duh. Never mind. Found it. Olga Korbut, 1972.
Wow. That was worth seeing. She was awesome. I remember her being a heroine to me, then Nadia Comaniche (spelling?) later on.
The bars were closer together then. Her routine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOOmFgBAdIA) that I just watched looked harder than what I’m seeing today!
I wonder when the bars started getting moved further apart. I could have sworn when I was a gymnast, that they were still pretty close together. On the other hand, as a guy, i didn’t pay much attention to the uneven bars. For men anyway, there was a major shift in the 1980’s to the way gymnastics was done. Difficulty skyrocketed and Nastia’s father was one of the major players in that movement. On a whim, I looked him up a month ago. You can imagine my suprise to find that his daughter was going to be on the US team.
Pretty neat description here.
It’s pretty neat to read the highlight sections of past years Olympics, that’s how I ended up on that page earlier.
That answers my other question. I was wondering why don’t gymnasts transition from the high to the low bar by catching it with their hips anymore. (I always thought that looked like it would hurt.)
No way was that harder. Giant swings and release moves are much more difficult than anything she did. That would be a moderately difficult routine today, but probably not Olympic caliber.
I remember there was also controversy over a move Korbut did on the beam…a back somersault, I think it was. IIRC, they decided it was too dangerous and wouldn’t let her do it. These days, it’s done all the time, even in high school meets.
Do gymnasts still whack their pelvises against the low bar like they did back then? I never imagined that being very healthy in the long run.
I knew a gymnast in college, back around 1995, who was working on a new move on the beam: a back flip, which was done all the time, but she wanted to add a full twist. I had never heard of such a thing being attempted, and it sounded impossible, practically suicide. Now, flips with a twist are getting almost common. I’m pretty sure I’ve even seen a front flip with a twist, which is really nuts (front flips are dangerous enough, because when you flip forward, you can’t see the beam before your feet contact it).
Did her performance win a medal?
She got a silver medal for it — the gold went to the East German Karin Janz. Olga did win the gold in for floor exercises and the balance beam, though.
I remember that adding the twisting elements was considered to be nearly impossible, because they aways said that the key to staying on the beam was to keep your shoulders “square” to it. That is, parallel to the ground and with the beam centered on your body. The twisting obviously throws that advice right out. Like you, I remember being amazed when I first saw them being done.
The wikipedia article says the Korbut Flip is not permitted now.
I took gymnastics as a P.E. class in high school in 1977-78 (our school had the #1 gymnastics program in Texas at the time), but I hadn’t been aware of the significant changes since then. Amazing.
As stated in the Wikipedia article, the bars have been moved further apart so this move can no longer be done.
Even if it were allowed, it wouldn’t be performed because it is awkward and stops the flow of a routine without adding anything special. There are a lot of legal moves out there like this. Wrong way giants are extremely dangerous and difficult, but when performed they simply look like a mistake with bad form.
I think that’s why it’s not allowed…the prohibition is against standing on the bars, and while the trick itself is cool, it does stop the flow of the routine. Korbut used to also do a dismount that was launched from standing on the bar, and the whole thing does have a choppy look to it.
The Wikipedia article says that the back flip on the beam is still considered very difficult, but I dispute that. Add a twist, and that’s a different story, but a basic back flip is not considered difficult on its own.
It’s not exactly a “pelvis whack”- it’s more of a wrap. It’s easy and painless if you hit so that the lower bar comes in contact with your lower belly/upper legs and you “wrap” your body around the bar and your legs come up. When it’s done fast, it looks like you’re folding in half.
Damn…- I just wasted a bunch of time watching Olga’s & Nadia’s old routines from Munich, Montreal, etc. Nadia was amazing, absolutely amazing, and truly groundbreaking. And I loved the commentators’ shock at Olga’s backflip! They lost their minds! 
Wow. Looking at how close the bars were back then, my first thought is, “They didn’t have room to do anything!” I don’t remember watching gymnastics before the mid '80s, right about when they started moving them farther apart.
Not that it isn’t fascinating watching what was done, but boy, things have changed. Last night I found some stuff on Youtube that had footage back from the '50s, and I was wondering when the women were going to actually do anything challenging (relatively speaking, of course). No insult intended to gymnasts of the past, but the difference between what was done then and now was striking.