A cache in the Geocacaching Olympics series.
Founded in 1881, the International Gymnastics Federation is the oldest international sports federation in the world. The origin of gymnastics dates to antiquity, when it was recommended by philosophers as a way of combining physical exercise with intellectual activity. The sport grew in popularity during the 19th century as an increasing number of competitions were formed, including the gymnastics competition at the newly revived Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.
Artistic gymnastics is composed of a number of individual competitions on different apparatus, as well as a team competition involving gender-specific apparatus. Each piece of apparatus requires different skills, and each element of gymnastic competition requires strength, agility, coordination, and precision.
In women’s artistic gymnastics, there are four core events:
Beam. Putting balance and precision to the test, gymnasts perform a series of turns, flips and jumps on a foam-padded balance beam, around four feet from the floor, five metres long, and just 10 centimetres wide.
Vault. Competitors sprint to gather speed before using a springboard to launch themselves into the air. They must hit the table with both of their hands and perform a variety of airborne twists and saltos. The most difficult vault is called the Produnova and is rarely attempted – even at the Olympics.
Uneven bars. In the women’s tournament, the uneven bars are the ultimate test of upper body strength. Competitors need to perform a variety of swings and twists on the low and high bars. They must also transition between the two, soaring six feet through the air, before dismounting and landing with their feet neatly together.
At Montreal 1976, Nadia Comaneci achieved the first ever perfect score for her Olympic performance on the uneven bars.
Floor exercise. Combining dance, gymnastics and drama, each competitor performs a 90-second routine to music. Using the sprung floor to help them gain height, the gymnasts must execute a range of specified moves including tumbles, leaps and pirouettes.
At the Olympics, there are also medals for the team competition and the individual all-around women. These two events are designed to test the gymnasts’ skills on all four pieces of equipment. The rules state that only two gymnasts per country can enter the all-around women’s event.
There are a greater number of events on the men’s artistic gymnastics programme – eight in total – across six pieces of equipment:
Rings. Holding on to two rings, gymnasts lift and hold their body in gravity-defying positions to gain points. The Maltese Cross is considered one of the most difficult moves, where gymnasts hold their body horizontally with their arms outstretched parallel to their body.
Vault. This event is the same as the women’s programme.
Pommel horse. Notoriously difficult to master, gymnasts have to use their arms and upper body strength to support their weight on the horse as they swing their legs around in fluid, flowing motions.
Horizontal bar. Gymnasts must perform swings, turns and a complex dismount on one bar, approximately nine feet in the air.
Parallel bars. Using their upper body strength, gymnasts need to execute a series of swings and flight moves on two parallel bars. The most challenging manoeuvres are when the gymnast loses sight of the poles for a split-second.
Floor exercise. In the men’s floor exercise event, there is greater emphasis on acrobatics than in the women’s event.
Two additional events test the overall skill of the male gymnasts, with Olympic medals in the team competition and individual all-around men as well. As with the women’s, only two male gymnasts from each competing country can enter the all-around event.
Gymnasts are awarded a D score for difficulty and an E score for execution.
· The difficulty score is based on the performed moves, earning between 0.1 and 1.0 points per move.
· The top eight moves are counted for women, and top 10 for men, to give them their final D score.
· For the vault, it’s simply the score associated with the vault move.
· For their E score, every gymnast starts with the perfect 10.0 score, with points deducted for any mistakes.
· The gymnast with the highest combined D and E score wins.
· The gymnast with the highest combined score from all events wins the all-around event.
Up until 2004, gymnastic routines at the Games were evaluated with a maximum of 10 points, but from 2005 the mode of scoring changed to a combination of a D score (difficulty/content of the exercise) and an E score (execution) to allow for a greater variation between athletes’ performances.
Changes to the scoring system were first considered following the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, when Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci became the first competitor in history to earn a perfect score of 10.0 for her routine on the uneven bars during the team competition.
Artistic gymnastics was introduced at the very first Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896 and has been included in every edition since. The competition was restricted to male competitors for 32 years until the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, when women were allowed to compete for the first time. It wasn't until 1952 that the women’s programme was developed with seven events, and then later stabilised at six events, as has been the case since the 1960 Games in Rome. There are eight events on the men’s programme.
