 |
To the Ancient Greeks, physical fitness was paramount, and all Greek cities had a gymnasia, a courtyard for jumping,
running, and wrestling. As the Roman Empire ascended, Greek gymnastics gave way to military training. The Romans, for example, introduced
the wooden horse. In 393 AD the Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympic Games, which by then had become corrupt, and gymnastics, along
with other sports declined. Later, Christianity, with its medieval belief in the base nature of the human body, had a deleterious effect
on gymnastics. For centuries, gymnastics was all but forgotten.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, two pioneer physical educators — Johann Friedrich GutsMuth (1759–1839)
and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852) — created exercises for boys and young men on apparatus they designed that ultimately led to what
is considered modern gymnastics. In particular, Jahn crafted early models of the horizontal bar, the parallel bars (from a horizontal ladder with
the rungs removed), and the vaulting horse.
By the end of the nineteenth century, men's gymnastics competition was popular enough to be included in the first "modern" Olympic
Games in 1896. However, from then on until the early 1950s, both national and international competitions involved a changing variety of
exercises gathered under the rubric gymnastics that would seem strange to today's audiences: synchronized team floor calisthenics, rope
climbing, high jumping, running, horizontal ladder, etc. During the 1920s, women organized and participated in gymnastics events, and
the first women's Olympic competition — primitive, for it involved only synchronized calisthenics — was held at the 1928 Games
in Amsterdam.
Women's gymnastics exhibition, London, 1908.
By the 1954 Olympic Games apparatus and events for both men and women had been standardized in modern format, and uniform grading
structures (including a point system from 1 to 10) had been agreed upon. At this time, Soviet gymnasts astounded the world with highly
disciplined and difficult performances, setting a precedent that continues to inspire. The new medium of television helped publicize and
initiate a modern age of gymnastics. Both men's and women's gymnastics now attract considerable international interest, and excellent
gymnasts can be found on every continent.
Nadia Comaneci received the first perfect score, at the 1976 Olympic Games held in Montreal, Canada. She was coached by the famous
Romanian, Béla Károlyi. According to Sports Illustrated, Comaneci scored four of her perfect tens on the uneven bars, two on the
balance beam and one in the floor exercise. Unfortunately, even with Nadia's perfect scores, the Romanians lost the gold medal to the
Soviets. Nadia will always be remembered as "a fourteen-year-old ponytailed little girl" who showed the world that perfection could be
achieved.
In 2006, a new points system was put into play. Instead of being marked 1 to 10, the gymnast's start value depends on the difficulty
rating of the exercise routine. Also, the deductions became higher: before the new point system developed, the deduction for a fall was
0.5, and now it is 0.8. The motivation for a new point system was to decrease the chance of gymnasts getting a perfect score.
| |
