Olympic Games

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Gymnastics at the Olympics

Gymnastics is one of five sports that have been contested at every summer Olympic games since 1896. The others are: Athletics, Cycling, Fencing and Swimming.

Events

There are three separate disciplines at the Olympic Games in the sport of gymnastics. They are:

• Gymnastics - Artistic
  
• Gymnastics - Trampoline
  
• Gymnastics - Rhythmic

Trivia

• The youngest ever Olympian was Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics when he was 10 years old (this does not count the young boys who competed as coxswain in the rowing events in 1896)

• Club Swinging was an early Olympic gymnastics event,as was tumbling and rope climbing. See more unusual Olympic gymnastics events.

• In 1904 in St Louis, one of the most remarkable athletes was the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals even though his left leg was made out of wood.

• In 1928, Luigina Giavotti became the youngest medallist of all time, helping the Italian gymnastics team pick up a silver at the age of 11 years and 302 days.

• During the London Olympics in 1948, one of nine members of Czechoslovakia women's gymnastics team, Eliška Misáková, became ill when she arrived in London. Diagnosed with polio, she died on the last day of the Olympics, the same day her remaining teammates won the competition.

• In 1964, Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina won six medals for the third time in a row. She is the Olympic athlete with the most medals (18) and the most medals in individual events (14). See more on the Greatest Gymnasts at the Olympics.

• No gymnast had ever achieved a perfect score of 10 until Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci scored seven of them at the 1976 Montreal games. In 1980, she returned to win two more gold medals.

• In 1980, Soviet athlete Aleksandr Dityatin won a record eight medals in gymnastics.

• In 1984, 16-year-old Mary Lou Retton earned her place on Wheaties boxes by winning four gymnastics medals - including a gold in all-around gymnastics - just six weeks after undergoing knee surgery.

• In 1992, Gymnast Vitaly Scherbo of the Unified Team won six gold medals in gymnastics.

• In 1996, the US won gold in gymnastics, with the help of Kerri Strug, who nailed her second vault despite having a sprained ankle.

• In 2000, Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov won six medals, as he had done in Atlanta in 1996.

Related Pages

• More information about the sport of Gymnastics
• See more on the Greatest Gymnasts at the Olympics.
• See also information about gymnastics at the Commonwealth Games.
• Some unusual gymnastics events have once been part of the Olympics.
• List of Olympic Sports