twentytwenty domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /www/gymnasticshistorycom_663/public/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121In 1928, women finally competed in gymnastics at the Olympic Games. Previously, they had been allowed to perform exhibitions, but they weren’t part of the competitive program.
The rules for the women’s competition at the 1928 Olympic Games were vague at best. After reading this post, you’ll probably have more questions than answers.
So, here are the rules…
In recent posts, we’ve talked a lot about the Swiss men, but we haven’t said much about the Swiss women. Even though Switzerland hosted the 1950 World Championships, the federation did not send any women. As the writer in Gazette de Lausanne noted:
The reason is that the leaders of our federation do not want to put our ladies in competition, considering that the latter is not reserved for representatives of the weaker sex. Are they wrong, are they right?
Gazette de Lausanne, July 18, 1950
La cause en est que les dirigeants de notre fédération ne veulent pas’ mettre nos dames en compétition, estimant que cette dernière n’est pas réservée aux représentantes du sexe faible. Ont-ils tort, ont-ils raison?
Intrigued, I looked into when and how the Swiss women were finally allowed to compete in gymnastics internationally. It turns out that the story is more complicated than it’s normally presented.
For starters, women’s artistic gymnasts from Switzerland had competed internationally before their supposed debut at the World Championships in 1966.
In fact, they had competed at an Olympics—just not the Olympics that you’re probably thinking of.
In 1950, women competed at their third World Championships, and guess what happened.
The vault judges botched the scoring so badly that they had to be replaced.
Who said that old gymnastics meets were boring?
Oh, and unlike the 1934 and 1938 World Championships, the competitors did not compete in track and field events in 1950. (The men did.)
While the men had a Code of Points in place for the 1950 World Championships, the women did not. But they did have a book of General Instructions. What follows are the highlights.
Competition previews are a tried and true genre of gymnastics sports writing. They give you a snapshot of who are the favorites, how certain countries’ gymnasts are perceived, and what the supposed expectations of the judges are. Plus, they are fun to read after the competition and see how much the author got right and wrong.
Let’s take a look at the preview for the 1950 World Championships in Basel, Switzerland. It was written by Jean A. Latte and was printed in the French Moroccan newspaper La Vigie Marocaine on July 7, 1950.
Female gymnasts did not compete in the International Tournament or in the Belgian Federal Festival. But they did perform, and according to the newspaper reports, they were crowd favorites.
In this article, we’ll take a look at those newspaper reports, as well as some of the challenges facing women’s gymnastics in fin-de-siècle western European society.
Note: I’m going to refer to it as “women’s gymnastics” in this post, but we won’t be discussing the performances of adult women. Rather, the gymnasts were typically young girls.
The London Olympics were only the third official Olympic competition for women. (Previously, women had competed at the 1928 and 1936 Olympics. There had been exhibitions at previous Olympics, and they had competed at the 1934 and 1938 World Championships.)
Needless to say, women’s gymnastics was still in a state of flux. So, let’s dive in and see what happened at this competition with rhythmic ensemble routines and flying rings.
Note: You can find out more about the rules and apparatus norms here.
1948 was a different time in women’s gymnastics. 15 points as the maximum score for optional routines. Flying rings. Ensemble exercises. No all-around competition.
Let’s take a look at the rules.
History is a matter of perspective, and, by extension, so are gymnastics results. As we’ll see, the women’s event finals were highly contested at the 1968 Olympic Games.
Let’s take a look at what happened…
On Wednesday, October 23, 1968, the Olympians in women’s artistic gymnastics competed in the optionals portion of the competition. As far as gold medals were concerned, there weren’t any surprises. The Soviet team was leading after the compulsories, and they ended up with gold. Čáslavská was leading the all-around after compulsories, and she won gold.
But the competition had its fair share of drama, especially on the podium. Let’s take a look at what happened.
