A traditional sport that has featured in every edition of the modern Olympics since they started in 1896, Gymnastics remains one of the most exciting events that the Games have to offer. While the stakes have been raised with every passing year, the sport has witnessed a lot of transformation in the way athletes perform their routines as per the latest international rules.
But the basic outline of having world-class gymnasts qualify and entertain the worldwide audience from the Olympic venue remains intact till date. On that note, let us now take a look at 10 of the greatest gymnasts ever to have graced the Olympic Games:
Also Read: Why you should cheer when Dipa Karmakar lands on her feet at Rio
#10 Kerri Strug – USA
At the age of 18, Arizona-born Kerri Strug propelled the United States women's gymnastics team to their first ever gold medal at the Olympics. But the manner in which the feat was accomplished makes the 1996 Atlanta incident one of the greatest moments in Olympic history.
Widely known as The Magnificent Seven, Kerri’s team held a comfortable lead over the Russians going into the final round of the team competition. As the Americans went for the vaults, Russia were to perform the floor exercise to decide the ultimate winner. It was then that four of the US athletes failed to land cleanly, followed by Dominique Moceanu falling on both of her attempts that fetched a below par score.
Strug was the last participant to step up for the vaults, and to stretch the lead beyond Russia’s reach, she needed to score 9.6 at least. On her first try, her landing went so wrong that she could hear a loud snap in her ankle as she fell on the platform. She had registered 9.162, and to ensure her team’s gold medal, coach Bela Karolyi required her to go again. With two torn ligaments and a third-degree lateral sprain, Kerri darted down the ramp for her second vault, which she executed cleanly despite the searing pain in her left foot. As she slumped to her knees after finishing the routine on one leg, the scores read 9.712.
For the immensely talented gymnast that she was, Kerri lost out on the opportunity to chase glory at the individual disciplines that she’d qualified for, due to the injury. Twenty years on, she stands tall among the champions to have featured in gymnastics in the Olympic Games.
#9 George Eyser – USA
In the third edition of the modern Olympics held in St. Louis in 1904, German-turned-American George Eyser powered to six individual medals which included three golds, on a single day. October 29th, 1904 saw a 34-year-old Eyser clinch gold in Rope Climbing, Parallel bars and Vaults, alongside a silver each in Pommel Horse and the 4-event all-around apart from the bronze in Horizontal bar.
The unbelievable aspect of his performance was his wooden left leg, which had been put in place after he’d lost his leg in a train accident at a young age. With the prosthetics available longer than a century ago, George competed against the fittest athletes of his era and won big in Olympic gymnastics, in spite of his obvious impediment.
#8 Agnes Keleti – Hungary
A raging World War II led to the dismissal of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics, thereby denying Hungarian champion Agnes Keleti a chance to participate in the sporting extravaganza during her best years. To make things worse, an untimely injury denied her Olympic debut in 1928 London despite her qualification. Finally, at the age of 31, Agnes travelled to Helsinki to represent Hungary in gymnastics at the 1952 Olympics.
She returned from Finland with four medals – a gold in floor exercise, silver in the team all-around and one bronze each in uneven bars and team portable apparatus. Four years later, Agnes, 35, went on to become the most successful athlete in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. As the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold, she emerged victorious in balance beam, uneven bars, floor exercise and portable apparatus, and fetched two more silvers to stretch her medal tally to 10.
#7 Viktor Chukarin – USSR
Viktor Chukarin was taken as a prisoner of war in 1941 and sent to the Sandbostel camp after he had volunteered to the Soviet Army. Having spent the next four years across 17 German concentration camps, he returned to Ukraine weighing a mere 40 kgs, which led to his rejection from the Institute of Physical Education in Kiev, where he’d trained earlier.
Fighting his way back into the competitive sport the following year, Viktor became the all-Soviet champion in 1949. In his Olympic debut in Helsinki 1952 at the age of 30, Viktor emerged as the most successful athlete with 4 golds and 2 silvers to his name.
In the following edition in 1956, Viktor added three golds to his collection. He left Melbourne with 2 more medals, one of them his maiden silver in floor exercise which was deemed an exceptionally tough discipline for his age and bodyweight.
#6 Boris Shakhlin – USSR
An Order of Lenin awardee and an inductee into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, Boris Shakhlin had ravaged the record books throughout his glittering career.
After a decent couple of golds at the 1956 Melbourne Games, Boris ran riot in Rome 1960, winning 7 medals, four of them golds which made him the highest achiever at the XVIIth Olympic Games. He returned in 1964 to take part in the Tokyo Games where he reached a total of 13 medals at the Olympic stage.
A heart attack at the age of 35 forced him to retire from competitive gymnastics in 1966, but his record of most medals won by a male Olympian stood for sixteen long years before his compatriot Nikolai Andrianov won his 14th Olympic medal in Moscow 1980.
#5 Nikolai Andrianov – USSR
One of the most decorated gymnasts of all time, Nikolai Andrianov had his record of most Olympic medals by a male athlete was outdone by Michael Phelps in Beijing 2008 when he clinched his 16th.
In his Olympic debut in Munich 1972, Nikolai won three medals, one of each colour. But his return in Montreal four years later saw him secure 7 medals, the highest of the 1976 edition, including 4 golds in all-around, floor exercise, rings and vault. By the end of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, Nikolai had fifteen medals, seven of which were golds and five silvers.
His record of most individual Olympic medals by a gymnast (12) is still intact while in the overall standings, he’s ranked third, behind only to Larisa Latynina’s 18 and Michael Phelps 22 at the Olympics. An innovative genius, the triple somersault dismount in gymnastics is credited to Nikolai Andrianov.
#4 Vera Caslavska – Czechoslovakia
Vera Caslavska happens to be the only gymnast ever, male or female, to have won Olympic gold in every individual event (all-around, vault, uneven bars, beam and floor exercise for women).
In the 1964 Tokyo and 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Vera won back-to-back gold medals in vault and all-around, the latter being a record she shares with legendary Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina. In 1968, she won the all-around title with the then all-time highest score, and her massive victory margin of 1.4 points is still the largest across Olympics, World and European Championships for women.
The political unrest in her home country forced her to retire after the 1968 Olympics. After a couple of hugely controversial decisions one of which even denied her a balance beam gold, the most popular woman in the Mexico City Games finished with 7 golds and 4 silver medals at the Olympic stage.
#3 Sawao Kato – Japan
Japan’s greatest ever Olympian – Sawao Kato ruled the gymnastics at the Olympics over three editions from 1968 to 1976. One of only ten athletes to win eight or more gold medals in Olympic history, Kato’s achievements place him at the top of all the male gymnasts who have graced the sport.
After a solid start at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics where he captured 3 golds and a bronze, Kato defended his all-around title in Munich 1972 and narrowly missed out on an unprecedented third in the same event when Nikolai Andrianov pipped him to the top spot in Montreal 1976. However, the Niigata-born athlete retained his gold in parallel bars in 1976, and ended his Olympic career with a total 12 medals – 8 of which were golds, 3 silvers and a solitary bronze.
#2 Nadia Comaneci – Romania
That perfection could be achieved in a sport that had never witnessed such a marvel was proven to the world by a 14-year-old girl from Romania named Nadia Comaneci.
On July 18th, 1976, Nadia dismounted the uneven bars after completing her routine to find the Omega scoreboard flashing 1.00 out of a possible 10. Within moments, the Montreal audience broke into a deafening applause as it became known that she’d registered an unprecedented perfect score of 10 for which there was no prior provision made by the scoreboard manufacturers. During the course of the 1976 Games, Nadia hit the 10-point mark on six further occasions, and finished with 5 medals, three being golds.
Following a similar show in Moscow 1980 where she successfully defended her Balance Beam crown, Nadia Comaneci’s Olympic cabinet had 5 golds, 3 silvers and one bronze medals. By virtue of her stellar displays across the two Olympic Games, she became the face of gymnastics all over the world for years to come.
#1 Larisa Latynina – USSR
Ukraine-born Larisa Semyonovna Latynina had a glittering Olympic career during which tumbling records were the order of the day. Her monumental feat of 18 medals stood for almost five decades before Michael Phelps surpassed it in London 2012. However, her individual tally of 14 Olympic medals is yet to be broken although the American swimmer has an opportunity to achieve the same in Rio 2016.
Squaring off against Hungarian champion Agnes Keleti, Larisa wowed spectators in Melbourne 1956 en route to her 4 golds. Showing outstanding consistency, Larisa won six medals in each Olympic edition that she featured in. Winning the floor exercise title three times in a row is another marvellous accomplishment of the Soviet gymnast.
Larisa was hailed as one of the major influences that caused the Soviet dominance over the field of Gymnastics in the Olympic Games.
