The American women’s gymnasts, 2016
I’ve pretty much turned away from watching international sports, but the Olympics sometimes draw me in.
This year it happened again, beginning with the women gymnasts. As gymnastic tumbling has grown ever more difficult and demanding, the sport has changed from the dominance of the balletic style I so loved—and which drew me to watching it for many years—to a cutesy, herky-jerky, sharp and almost-awkward style that comes to major and explosive life in the extraordinarily complex tumbling passes. The style is not my preference, but I decided to watch this year and am in awe of the physical accomplishment and the sheer ferocious will of its practitioners, particularly the Americans.
I well remember when American women gymnasts were so relatively poor at the sport that they were never in contention, and it was all about the Russian women. Then the Rumanians. Then the Chinese. But now it’s the Americans.
This is due in no small measure to the once-Rumanian, now-American coaches, the Karolyis. Some of the history:
Those comparisons are apt, but even among the great teams the Americans stand out. Since 1976, no country has won five consecutive team titles at major international competitions. The margin of victory is the biggest since at least 1972.
It’s a byproduct of a system that has seen the United States dominate since 2011. They’ve won all five world or Olympic titles since then…
It means building consistency of routines that allows the Americans to be confident when they get to this stage.
“It’s just that auto pilot or push the button and go,” said Karolyi. “Basically, they’re just so much automatic.”…
…While Karolyi has led the Americans to unprecedented success, the past five years have been dominant by even her standards.
Of the 88 world championship or Olympic medals they have since 2001, 34 have come since the United States’ run of dominance started in 2011.
The American female gymnasts all have the same relatively-hipless build I remarked on here, a shape both initially selected for and then further honed by the demands and practice of the sport.
That phrase I used earlier—“ferocious will”—kept coming to me as I watched. I think all world-class athletes must have it, and the higher they rank the more of it they seem to have. But in these girls (yeah, I know, “women,” but they sure look like girls because they are so small, plus most of them seem to have exhibited the same ferocity back when they really were young girls) that ferocious will is expressed in the extraordinary nature of what they manage to do with their small, cannonball-like bodies.
The best of them all is acknowledged to be Simone Biles. At 19 and 4’8″, every inch of Biles is packed with power:
Here’s a photo of the winning American team with their coach, who is about to retire:
You can see what I mean about the bodies. Also, the demographics of the sport have obviously changed. In terms of minorities, the five members of the team include two black women, one Hispanic, and one Jew. Everybody seems awfully friendly with each other, too. There’s a ton of seemingly heartfelt team spirit and hugging in women’s gymnastics.
Here they are, biting their medals:
A little blast from the past, this is the great Russian gymnast Tourischeva in 1976, doing a winning routine that is balletic but features the sort of tumbling that might be seen from a 7-year old these days. I loved her at the time, and still love her style:
Note also that there’s a live pianist.
Being of a similar age, I too prefer the artistry of past gymnastics to today’s singular focus upon athleticism. If athleticism and perfection of execution are now the sine qua non of gymnastics, then something vital has been lost.
Which leads to the observation that now that accommodation of transgendered athletes has become mandatory, how long till women’s competition becomes a thing of the past? Feminist privilege VS gender ‘identity’…
Slightly off topic, how about the very serious health issues arising at this Olympics and the multiple incidents of Muslim bad sportsmanship toward the Israelis? Talk about a violation of the Olympic spirit.
I too prefer the balletic style, but Tourischeva already in 1976 is using some of the jerky modern moves (which I think verge on the obscene for some performers).
She also works to the music, while most modern athletes, including ice skaters, could have put on a random recording and still had the same correspondence (or lack thereof) between the composition and the components.
Torischeva is a good-looking young woman and the routine shows it, or takes advantage of it.
Having the US team doing even a little hip-shot vamping would be silly. They’re not built for it.
If some is good, more is better, and down the path you go until you have foreclosed other directions.
Neo has remarked on that in dance.
I#m not much of a sports fan, but watching the clios I’ve seen of people like Simone Biles is certainly a wonderful respite from the never-ending politics this year.
GB: yes the irony of the feminists of the past pushing (and I agree) for more support for women’s sports, are now pushing for transgender participation which could effectively destroy women’s sports. As a father of two women athletes, I cringe when I see what’s happening.
As far as the Olympics, I watch the women’s gymnastics and basketball (hey I’m from CT the center of the universe for women’s basketball), some swimming, and the golf and soccer. I hate track and field. The great thing about the summer games is that there’s something for everyone; one doesn’t have to watch everything.
Now if we could just find a way to fire Jill Ellis as coach of the US women’s soccer team; all will be well.
Well somebody has to mention Nadia Comaneci, don’t they? 🙂
And Olga Korbut. 😉
And Tonya Harding!
j/k
And remember Svetlana Boginskaya? She was a wonder.
Thanks for the memories, neo!
“Ferocious will” – what a beautiful phrase.
The ferocity of Will of American women is terrifying, so no surprise that they dominate a sport which depends on it.
Unfortunately young Olympic athletes have the same pressures College football players face without the chance of a big payoff. I went to high school with several Olympic speed skaters (women and men) in the early 1970s. Nice kids but their lives were totally warped. They drove 100 miles each way to the closest indoor olympic ice rink to train and had other intense commitments. But unlike figure skating there is no professional career other than coaching the next set of skaters. The old Communist countries changed that face of sports like this with their state sponsored training schools and camps. No more Olympic amateurs. The movie Unbroken has a nice substory about the main characters real life experience as an Olympic track star. He trained at high school in California but otherwise had an ordinary life.
ESPN recently produced a short documentary on the story of a young gymnast (who was born without legs and was adopted) who set out to find her Olympian gymnast, biological sister (Dominique Monceau).
It’s one of the most extraordinary and uplifting stories I have ever seen. I urge everyone to take 15 minutes and watch it. It’s a real antidote to the majority of the news stories these days:
http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=13718000
According to the left
They didn’t earn that
They were priveledged
Where are the fat gymnasts???
Earlier versions of women’s gymnastic were perhaps better as a performance, but athletics are supposed to be, well, athletic.
“Rumania” is the old spelling, which the Romanians themselves dropped about 150 years ago. Other countries followed suit slowly, and “Romania” has been official in English since between the World Wars. No need to bother to add the diacritical over the first “a” unless you are writing in Romanian, however.
If you’re looking for the long legged ballerina gymnasts of old, rhythmic gymnastics floor routines is the place to find them.
I don’t even know if the US fields a team in this sport, but there are some truly classically beautiful young women to be found there doing some pretty astonishing routines.
El Polacko. The more “astonishing” they get, more than likely, the more “athletic” and “powerful” their moves will have to be to beat the competition. Same path.
Did anybody notice that some of the Russian female athletes are beautiful? They certainly outclass the other females in this category.
Ray:
That’s been true for a long, long time. I’m not sure what it’s all about.
Not that the other gymnasts are any slouches in the looks department, either.
El Polacko:
I love rhythmic gymnastics, but they don’t show all that much of it on TV, and it’s not a big deal in this country.
It’s very strange, though.
Richard Aubrey: Rhythmic gymnastics require nowhere near the same raw power the musclebound little tumblers and equipment gymnasts need.
It is a remarkably graceful combination of balletic movement and handling of very light apparatus like balls, ribbons and hula hoops they toss around.
I can’t imagine what a difficult decision it’d be for a parent to let (or push) a child down that road. Any sort of prodigy activity. Five hours a day violin, dancing, chess, skating, whatever. Knowing the kid will have a completely different upbringing than the usual. The chance that a bad landing will make all the effort for naught. I know that experts can spot the kids who physically don’t have what it takes (although there could be a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy in that), but as a parent you’d have to gauge if your child really has the intensity to stick with the activity for so many years. So much easier to give them three sports and two hobbies.
There is a clear and present effort to blur the equal and complementary nature of men and women. It has been a progressive slope ever since the successful indoctrination of a fantasy that debases human life from conception.