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WOMEN'S ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS
Women's Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) entered the Olympics as a team event in 1928. At the first gymnastics World Championships in
1950, the sport as it is known today was included, with competition in team, all-around and apparatus final events. At the next Olympics, in 1952,
this format was adopted and has remained as such to this day.
The earliest champions in women's gymnastics tended to be in their twenties; most had studied ballet for years before entering the sport.
Larissa Latynina, the first great Soviet gymnast, won her first Olympic all-around medal at the age of 22, her second at
26 and her third at 30; she became the 1957 World Champion while pregnant with her daughter. Czech gymnast
Vera Cáslavská,
who followed Latynina to become a two-time Olympic all around champion, was 22 before she started winning gold medals.
In the 1970s, the average age of Olympic gymnastics competitors began to gradually decrease. While it was not unheard of to for teenagers
to compete in the 1960s — Ludmilla Tourischeva was 16 at her first Olympics in 1968 — they slowly became the norm,
as difficulty in gymnastics increased. Smaller, lighter girls generally excelled in the more challenging acrobatic elements required by the
redesigned Code of Points. The 58th Congress of the Fédération
Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), held in July 1980, just
before the Olympics, decided to raise the minimum age limit for major international senior competition from 14 to 15. The change, which came
into effect two years later, didn't eliminate the problem. By the time the 1992 Olympics rolled around, elite competitors consisted almost
exclusively of "pixies" — underweight, prepubertal teenagers — and concerns were raised about athlete welfare.
The FIG responded to this trend by raising the minimum age requirement for international elite competition to 16 in 1997. This, combined
with changes in the Code of Points and evolving popular opinion in the sport, have seen older gymnasts return to competition. While the average
elite female gymnast is still in her middle to late teens and of below-average height and weight, it is also common to see gymnasts competing
well into their twenties. At the 2005 World Championships in Melbourne, the silver medalist on vault,
Oksana Chusovitina, was a
thirty-year-old mother. At the 2004 Olympics, both the second place American team and the third placed Russians were captained by women in
their mid-twenties; several other teams, including Australia, France and Canada, had older gymnasts.
APPARATUS
Vault
The vault is an event shared by both men and women, with little difference between the two categories. Gymnasts sprint down a runway, which
is a maximum of 25 meters in length, before hurdling onto a spring board. The body position is maintained while "punching" (blocking using
only a shoulder movement) the vaulting platform. The gymnast then rotates to a standing position. In advanced gymnastics, multiple twists
and somersaults may be added before landing. Successful vaults depend on the speed of the run, the length of the hurdle, the power the gymnast
generates from the legs and shoulder girdle, the kinesthetic awareness in the air, and the speed of rotation in the case of more difficult and
complex vaults.
In 2001, the traditional vaulting horse was replaced with a new apparatus, sometimes known as a tongue or table. The new apparatus is more
stable, wider, and longer than the older vaulting horse — approximately 1 meter in length and 1 meter in width, gives gymnasts a larger
blocking surface, and is therefore safer than the old vaulting horse. With the addition of this new, safer vault, gymnasts are attempting far
more difficult and dangerous vaults.
Uneven Bars
On the uneven bars (also known as asymmetric bars in the UK), the gymnast navigates two 8-foot-long horizontal bars set at different heights. The heights
are generally fixed — one bar at 5 and the other at 8 feet — but the width may be adjusted. Gymnasts perform swinging, circling, transitional, and release moves, as well as moves that
pass through the handstand. Usually in higher levels of gymnastics, leather grips are worn to ensure that the gymnast maintains a grip on the
bar, and to protect the hands from blisters and tears (known as rips), gymnasts sometimes wet their grips with water from a spray bottle and
then may apply chalk to their grips to prevent the hands from slipping. Chalk may also be applied to the hands if grips are not worn and/or
to the bar. The most common way to mount the uneven bars is by using a springboard and jumping towards the lower bar.
Balance Beam
The gymnast performs a choreographed routine from 70 to 90 seconds in length consisting of leaps, acrobatic skills, turns and dance elements
on a padded sprung beam. Apparatus norms set by the International Gymnastics Federation (used for Olympic and most elite competitions) specify
the beam must be 125 cm (4' 1") high, 500 cm (16' 5") long, and 10 cm (4") wide. The event requires in particular, balance, flexibility
and strength.
Floor Exercise
The floor event occurs on a carpeted 12-meter by 12-meter square (40 feet by 40 feet), usually consisting of hard foam over a layer of plywood, which is supported
by springs or foam blocks generally called a "sprung" floor. This provides a firm surface that will respond with force when compressed, allowing
gymnasts to achieve extra height and a softer landing than would be possible on a regular floor. Female gymnasts perform a choreographed exercise
70 to 90 seconds long with music. The music is instrumental and cannot include vocals. The routines consist of tumbling passes, series of jumps,
dance elements, acrobatic skills, and turns. A gymnast usually performs four or five tumbling passes that include three or more skills or "tricks."
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