A long time ago there was a girl participating in the Olympic gymnastics competition. 17 years old, slender and slight. In her first event, the uneven bars, she made an extraordinary basic error and dissolved into tears alone – no one comforted her. Her next event, the beam, the crowd were very tense for her but she performed startlingly, and in her smile something extraordinary happened; the audience dissolved into her. She became an instant adoration. Later in the uneven bars event needing a perfect 10 to win – no one had ever scored 10 before – she executed a dazzling routine, the highlight a standing backward somersault to swing-down in which she managed to propel herself backwards as if sucked by a giant invisible vacuum cleaner and deftly clasp the bar behind her and carry on spinning and somersaulting. “Never been done before by any human,” exclaimed one astonished American commentator. Another highlight was the Back Layout Dismount from the top of the high bar over the low bar (no longer allowed as it’s considered too dangerous) again executed superbly. The judges scored her 9.8 not 10 which meant she was second not first and the whole place erupted in an outpouring of boos and jeers against the judges seriously disrupting the rest of the competition. On the final apparatus, the floor she again swooned the audience, presenting a radiant interpretative dance intoxicated with daring jumps and tumbles all wrapped up in her innocent smile. She needed 9.9 to win. She got it.
The girl: Olga Korbut, USSR ;the year: 1972; the venue: Munich the Olympic Games; the backdrop: the cold war between USA and USSR.
Before Olga, gymnastics was largely unheralded. Olga changed that. Olga launched a million girlie tumbles, wide-eyed hand gestures, not to mention dangerous blindside backflips from high bars. The impossible mix of acrobatics, artistry and charisma. And seemed to be having a whole lot of fun doing it. Faster, higher, stronger is the Olympic mantra but Olga added lovelier.
Some are born charismatic, others acquire charisma, yet others have charisma trust about them. With Olga it was all three; a slender slight girl being natural in a world moving from colourless conflict to colour TV. The miracle that anyone under the strict communist regime was capable of captivating a mass audience was unthinkable, but Olga did. After the Olympics, she met US President Nixon at the White House who to quote Olga told her “that my performance in Munich did more for reducing the political tension during the Cold War between our two countries than the embassies were able to do in five years.”
Maybe that’s true.
The sport has moved on a lot acrobatically since Olga, however the pressure on the girls hasn’t lessoned, indeed it may have intensified. In the 2021 Olympics, the world’s number one gymnast, Simone Biles pulled out of the competition citing mental health problems when she lost spatial awareness in the middle of a vault..
To those not dedicated to sport, it’s easy to forget the dangers, the dedication and the stress on both body and mind. And it’s got to be especially more difficult when you’re the global icon of your sport. To successfully defy normality is to redefine it; Olga Korbut changed the world in the cold climate of 1972. Only an opinion, sure. And as for Simone, she tweeted, “the outpouring love & support I’ve received has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics which I never truly believed before.”
