1909 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships

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1909 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
Location Flag of Luxembourg.svg Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  1907
1911  

The 4th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships were held in Luxembourg, in conjunction with the 9th Federal Festival of Luxembourg, on August 1, 1909. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

The countries sending teams to the games were France, Bohemia (i.e., the Czechs), Belgium, Carniola (i.e., Slovenia), and Italy. [5]

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. [7]

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) [8] [9] and 6th (1913) [10] [11] 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 [12] and USAG [13] (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. [14] [12] :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, [15] 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. [16] This brief biographical treatment was published at least as far back as 14 January 2017 on the official [17] 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. [18] 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.

Medal table

RankNationGoldSilverBronzeTotal
1Flag of France.svg  France  (FRA)5218
2Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg  Italy  (ITA)1034
3Flag of Bohemia.svg  Bohemia  (BOH)0516
4Flag of Austria-Hungary (1867-1918).svg Austria-Hungary 0101
Totals (4 entries)68519
Note

Official FIG documents credit medals earned by athletes from Bohemia as medals for Czechoslovakia. Medals earned by athletes from Austria-Hungary are officially credited as medals for Yugoslavia. [4]

Men's individual all around

RankAthleteTotal
1
Flag of France.svg Marco Torrès 163,250
2
Flag of Bohemia.svg Josef Cada 159,500
3
Flag of France.svg Armand Coidelle 158,750
4
Flag of Italy.svg Otello Capitani 158,250
5
(tie)
Flag of Italy.svg Guido Romano 157,750
5
(tie)
Flag of France.svg Louis Ségura 157,750

Men's team all around

RankMembersTotal
1Flag of France.svg FRA
Joseph Castiglioni, Auguste Castille, Armand Coidelle, Joseph Martinez, Louis Ségura, Marcos Torrès
950,500
2Flag of Bohemia.svg BOH
Josef Czada, Frantisek Erben, Frantisek Machovsky, Frantisek Mracek, Karel Stary, Ferdinand Steiner
940,500
3Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg ITA
Pietro Borghi, Alberto Braglia, Otello Capitani, Angelo Mazzoncini, Guido Romano, Giorgio Zampori
924,250

Men's rings

RankAthleteTotal
1 Flag of France.svg Marco Torrès 23,750
Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg Guido Romano 23,750
3 Flag of Bohemia.svg Frantisek Erben 23,250
Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg Angelo Mazzoncini 23,250
Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg Giorgio Zampori 23,250

Men's parallel bars

RangGymnasteTotal
1 Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez 24,000
2 Flag of France.svg Marco Torrès 23,570
Flag of France.svg Auguste Castille 23,570
Flag of Bohemia.svg Josef Cada 23,570
5 Flag of France.svg Armand Coidelle 23,500

Men's horizontal bar

RangGymnasteTotal
1 Flag of France.svg Joseph Martinez 24,000
2 Flag of Bohemia.svg Frantisek Erben 23,750
Flag of Austria-Hungary (1867-1918).svg K. Fuchs 23,750
Flag of Bohemia.svg Josef Cada 23,750
5 Flag of France.svg Marco Torrès 23,750

References

  1. Huguenin, Andre. 100 Years of the International Gymnastics Federation: 1881-1981 (PDF). Translated by Unger, Beatrice. International Gymnastics Federation. p. 80.
  2. "Historical Medalists - Individual". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2017-07-26.
  3. "Historical Medalists - Team". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2017-07-26.
  4. 1 2 Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (2005). 125th Anniversary - The story goes on... (PDF). FIG. p. 62.
  5. "Le Tournoi International de Gymnastique". Paris-Journal. 1 August 1909. p. 3. Retrieved 1 May 2025.
  6. 100 Years of the International Gymnastics Federation 1881-1981 (PDF). FIG. 1981. p. 76. Retrieved 28 April 2025.
  7. "1903: Men's Gymnastics at the First World Championships". Gymnastics History. 25 January 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2025.
  8. 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.
  9. History.com, Gymnastics. "1907: Perfect Scores Abound at the World Championships in Prague". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  10. 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.
  11. History.com, Gymnastics. "1913: The Last World Championships before World War I". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  12. 1 2 Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (2005). 125th Anniversary - The story goes on... (PDF). FIG. pp. 61–63.
  13. "Event History > World Championships – Men's Past Champions". usagym.org. Indianapolis, IN, USA: USA Gymnastics. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
  14. History.com, Gymnastics. "1907: Perfect Scores Abound at the World Championships in Prague". Gymnastics-History.com. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  15. 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.
  16. "Slavní absolventi naší školys" [Famous graduates of our school]. Gymnázium_Jiřího_Wolkera. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  17. "Gymnázium Jiřího Wolkera Homepage". Gymnázium_Jiřího_Wolkera. Retrieved 14 September 2025.
  18. ""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.