Gymnastics is a type of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shoulders, back, chest, and abdominal muscle groups. Gymnastics evolved from exercises used by the ancient Greeks that included skills for mounting and dismounting a horse, and from circus performance skills.
Věra Čáslavská was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast and Czech sports official. She won a total of 22 international titles between 1959 and 1968 including seven Olympic gold medals, four world titles and eleven European championships. Čáslavská is the most decorated Czech gymnast in history and is one of only two female gymnasts, along with Soviet Larisa Latynina, to win the all-around gold medal at two consecutive Olympics. She remains the only gymnast, male or female, to have won an Olympic gold medal in each individual event.
Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.
Yelena Viktorovna Davydova is a Russian-Canadian gymnastics coach and judge who competed for the former Soviet Union. She was the women's artistic individual all-around champion at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. She's the owner and head coach at Gemini Gymnastics, a gymnastics club in Oshawa, Ontario. In July 2012, Davydova was one of the coaches of the Canadian Women's Artistic Gymnastics Team. In 2016 Davydova was head floor judge at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Yelena Lvovna Shushunova was a Soviet Russian gymnast. Shushunova was one of five women who have won all-around titles at all major competitions: Olympics, World Championships and European/Continental Championships and one of ten women who medaled on every event at World Championships. Shushunova was renowned for pioneering complex skills as well as for her explosive and dynamic tumbling and high consistency.
Rhythmic gymnastics is a sport in which gymnasts perform on a floor with an apparatus: hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon. The sport combines elements of gymnastics, dance and calisthenics; gymnasts must be strong, flexible, agile, dexterous and coordinated. Rhythmic gymnastics is governed by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), which first recognized it as a sport in 1963. It became an Olympic sport in 1984, with an individual all-around event. The group all-around competition was added to the Olympics in 1996. At the international level, rhythmic gymnastics is a women-only sport. The most prestigious competitions, besides the Olympic Games, are the World Championships, World Games, European Championships, European Games, the World Cup Series and the Grand Prix Series. Gymnasts are judged on their artistry, execution of skills, and difficulty of skills, for which they gain points. They perform leaps, balances, and rotations along with handling the apparatus.
Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates all aspects of elite international competition. Within individual countries, gymnastics is regulated by national federations like British Gymnastics and USA Gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is a popular spectator sport at many competitions, including the Summer Olympic Games.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics, two different gymnastics disciplines were contested: artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics. The artistic gymnastics events were held at the Georgia Dome from July 20–25 and July 28–29. The rhythmic gymnastics events were held at Stegeman Coliseum in nearby Athens, on the campus of the University of Georgia from August 1–4.
Nellie Vladimirovna Kim is a retired Soviet and Belarusian gymnast of Sakhalin Korean and Tatar descent who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. She was the second woman in Olympic history to earn a perfect 10 score and the first woman to score it on the vault and on the floor exercise, rivaling Nadia Comăneci, Ludmilla Tourischeva, and other strong competitors of the 1970s.
Daniela Viorica Silivaș-Harper, is a Romanian former artistic gymnast best known for medaling in every single event at one Olympics, winning six medals at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. In doing so, she was the fourth female gymnast to achieve this, after Maria Gorokhovskaya (1952), Larisa Latynina and Věra Čáslavská (1968). As of 2023, Silivaș is the only one athlete, male or female, having accomplished this feat, in the Modern Era of Artistic Gymnastics, in a non-boycotted Olympics.
Ecaterina Szabo is a former Romanian artistic gymnast who won 20 Olympic, world and continental medals.
The Friendship Games, or Friendship-84, was an international multi-sport event held between 2 July and 16 September 1984 in the Soviet Union and eight other socialist states which boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Olga Vasilyevna Mostepanova is a retired former Soviet gymnast. She won three gold medals at the World Championships.
At the 1984 Summer Olympics, two different gymnastics disciplines were contested. In addition to the fourteen artistic gymnastics events contested, for the first time at the Olympics, a rhythmic gymnastics event was contested–the women's individual all-around. All of the gymnastics events were held at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles from July 29 through August 11. Several teams who had qualified to compete were absent as a result of the 1984 Summer Olympics boycott, including the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and North Korea.
A perfect 10 is a score of 10.000 for a single routine in artistic gymnastics, which was once thought to be unattainable—particularly at the Olympic Games—under the code of points set by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). It is generally recognized that the first person to score a perfect 10 at the Olympic Games was Romanian Nadia Comăneci, at the 1976 Games in Montreal. Other women who accomplished this feat at the Olympics include Nellie Kim, also in 1976, Mary Lou Retton in 1984, Daniela Silivaș and Yelena Shushunova in 1988, and Lavinia Miloșovici in 1992. The first man to score a perfect 10 is considered to be Alexander Dityatin, at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Archery at the Friendship Games was held in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia between 23 and 26 August 1984. Two events were contested: men's individual and women's individual.
Athletics at the Friendship Games was contested in 41 events, 24 events by men and 17 by women. Men competed at the Grand Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium in Moscow, Soviet Union between 17 and 18 August, while women's events took place at the Evžen Rošický Stadium in Prague, Czechoslovakia between 16 and 18 August 1984.
The cycling competition at the Friendship Games consisted of two road cycling and five track cycling events. The individual road race was held at the Schleizer Dreieck race track in Schleiz, East Germany on 23 August 1984, the team road race was held in Forst, East Germany on 26 August 1984, while track cycling events were held at the Velodrome of the Trade Unions Olympic Sports Centre in Moscow, Soviet Union between 18 and 22 August 1984.
Volleyball at the Friendship Games was contested in two events. Men's event took place at the Ciudad Deportiva in Havana, Cuba between 18 and 26 August 1984. Women's event took place in Varna, Bulgaria between 8 and 15 July 1984.
Wrestling at the Friendship Games was contested in three disciplines: freestyle, Greco-Roman and sambo wrestling. Freestyle events took place at the Winter Sports Palace in Sofia, Bulgaria between 20 July and 22 July 1984. Greco-Roman events were contested at the Budapest Sportcsarnok in Budapest, Hungary between 13 and 15 July 1984. Sambo took part in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia between 1 and 2 September 1984.
Soviet Union (URS)
East Germany (GDR)
Czechoslovakia (TCH)
