1903 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships

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1903 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
Location Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Antwerp, Belgium
1905  

The Antwerp International Gymnastics Tournament (Tournois International Gymnastique D'Anvers), [1] retrospectively regarded as the 1st Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, were held in Antwerp, Belgium, in conjunction with the 27th Belgian Federal Festival, on 14-18 August 1903. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

The championships were purely team events without any individual awards. Individual all-round scores were only introduced in 1922, with the first all-round individual men's champion being recognised in that year. Individual apparatus scores were introduced subsequently. [6] As such no actual individual medals were awarded at these games, the below rankings were conferred retrospectively. [1]

Conversely, please note that contemporaneous, detailed coverage, beyond merely team totals, of select World Championships prior to World War I exists both in the pages of “Slovenski Sokol” magazine (via the Digital Library of Slovenia) and in reproductions of apparently original and contemporaneous Czech source materials (via Gymnastics-History.com) for both the 3rd (1907) [7] [8] and 6th (1913) [9] [10] editions of the World Championships. In the Czech versions of those sources, reproduced by Gymnastics-History.com, both individual all-around scores and apparatus scores are presented for every competitor, and in the Slovenian versions of those sources, individual all-around scores and rankings are reproduced for the top 14 and very last-place competitor for the 1907 Worlds and for every competitor at the 1913 Worlds. Additionally, all of the data that is presented in each of those sources completely matches the data that both the FIG [11] and USAG [12] (the official governing body of the sport of Artistic gymnastics within the USA) present in their respective treatments on the results of these pre-WWI World Championships, with the sole two exceptions of the horizontal bar placing of French Gymnast Francois Vidal and the parallel bars placement of Belgian gymnast Paul Mangin, both at the 1907 World Championships. [13] [11] :62 (In any event, all of these data sources - the Slovenian records, the Gymnastics-History.com's reproduced Czech records, the FIG's records, and the USAG's records - have continually failed to recognize the apparent original human error with respect to the discrepancy between Vidal's and Mangin's scores and rankings. In light of that, all of these data sources remain completely consistent, in terms of the data that they do present, with respect to the results of the pre-WWI editions of these World Championships.)

Additionally, please note that in lieu of an article published in the 10 June 2024 issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport (a peer-reviewed journal) claiming that the BFEG’s (the FIG’s predecessor) archives from before 1950 appear to have been lost, [14] a brief biographical treatment containing a photograph of multiple medals belonging to 1911 World All-Around Champion Ferdinand Steiner on the website of an alma mater of his, the Jiří Wolkera Gymnasium  [ cs ], shows multiple medals with the words "Concorso Ginnastico Internazionale 1911 Torino" embossed onto them. [15] This brief biographical treatment was published at least as far back as 14 January 2017 on the official [16] Facebook website of his alma mater in a photograph album, begun on 29 November 2016, containing other such brief biographical treatments of its notable alumni. [17] That pictoral presentation of Steiner’s medals helps suggest that individual medals were awarded for those 1911 World Championships as they were from the same locale and year as the 1911 Worlds, and with the original title of the competition being printed on those medals, this further helps suggest that these individual medals were awarded contemporaneously.


Participants

Results

Men's individual all-around

RankAthleteScore
1. Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez (FRA)122.000
2. Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Georges Wiernicks (BEL)121.500
2.. Flag of France.svg Joseph Lux (FRA)121.500
4 Flag of France.svg Georges Dejaeghère (FRA)121.00
5 Flag of France.svg Jules Lecoutre (FRA)119.00
6 Flag of France.svg Charles van Hulle (BEL)118.50
7 Flag of France.svg Eugène Dua (BEL)115.00
8 Flag of France.svg Pierre Payssé (FRA)114.50

[18]

Men's team all-around

RankTeamScore
1.Flag of France.svg  France 990.000
2.Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium 981.000
3.Flag of Luxembourg.svg  Luxembourg 909.000

Men's horizontal bar

RankAthleteScore
1. Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez (FRA)20.500
2. Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Charles van Hulle (BEL)20.000
2. Flag of France.svg Jules Lecoutre (FRA)20.000
2. Flag of France.svg Pierre Payssé (FRA)20.000

Men's parallel bars

RankAthleteScore
1. Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez (FRA)20.000
1. Flag of Luxembourg.svg François Hentges (LUX)20.000
3. Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Eugène Dua (BEL)19.500
3. Flag of Luxembourg.svg André Bordang (LUX)19.500

Men's pommel horse

RankAthleteScore
1. Flag of France.svg Georges Dejaeghere (FRA)18.000
1. Flag of France.svg Joseph Lux (FRA)18.000
1. Flag of the Netherlands.svg Hendricus Thijsen (NED)18.000

Men's rings

RankAthleteScore
1. Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez (FRA)20.000
2. Flag of Belgium (civil).svg François Walravens (BEL)19.000
2. Flag of France.svg Joseph Lux (FRA)19.000

Medal table

RankNationGoldSilverBronzeTotal
1Flag of France.svg  France  (FRA)74011
2Flag of Luxembourg.svg  Luxembourg  (LUX)1023
3Flag of the Netherlands.svg  Netherlands  (NED)1001
4Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium  (BEL)0415
Totals (4 entries)98320

References

  1. 1 2 "1903: Men's Gymnastics at the First World Championships". Gymnastics History. 25 January 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2025.
  2. Huguenin, Andre. 100 Years of the International Gymnastics Federation: 1881-1981 (PDF). Translated by Unger, Beatrice. International Gymnastics Federation. p. 76.
  3. "Historical Medalists - Individual". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2016-05-08.
  4. "Historical Medalists - Team". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2016-05-08.
  5. Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (2005). 125th Anniversary - The story goes on... (PDF). FIG. p. 61.
  6. 100 Years of the International Gymnastics Federation 1881-1981 (PDF). FIG. 1981. p. 76. Retrieved 28 April 2025.
  7. Murnik, Viktor (Dr.), ed. (25 March 1908). "Telovadba na zletu v Pragi" [Gymnastics on the runway in Prague]. Slovenski Sokol (in Slovenian). Vol. 5, no. 3. pp. 20–21. Retrieved 31 August 2025.
  8. History.com, Gymnastics. "1907: Perfect Scores Abound at the World Championships in Prague". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  9. Murnik, Viktor (Dr.), ed. (25 December 1913). "Slovenci na mednarodni tekmi v Parizu" [Slovenians at an international competition in Paris]. Slovenski Sokol (in Slovenian). Vol. 10, no. 12. pp. 13–14. Retrieved 31 August 2025.
  10. History.com, Gymnastics. "1913: The Last World Championships before World War I". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  11. 1 2 Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (2005). 125th Anniversary - The story goes on... (PDF). FIG. pp. 61–63.
  12. "Event History > World Championships – Men's Past Champions". usagym.org. Indianapolis, IN, USA: USA Gymnastics. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
  13. History.com, Gymnastics. "1907: Perfect Scores Abound at the World Championships in Prague". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  14. Vonnard, Philippe; Mayencourt, Gil. "Building European Fraternity Through Gymnastics: The Establishment of the Bureau Des Fédérations Européennes de Gymnastiques, 1863–1913". Taylor and Francis Online. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  15. "Slavní absolventi naší školys" [Famous graduates of our school]. Gymnázium_Jiřího_Wolkera. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  16. "Gymnázium Jiřího Wolkera Homepage". Gymnázium_Jiřího_Wolkera. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  17. ""Ferdinand Steiner " (in Zapomenutí rodáci města Prostějova (Forgotten Natives of the City of Prostějov))". Official Facebook Account of Gymnázium Jiřího Wolkera Prostějov (in Czech). 14 January 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  18. History.com, Gymnastics. "1903: Men's Gymnastics at the First World Championships". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved April 13, 2024.