We’re watching the greatest gymnasts who ever lived.
Or are we?
Mike Jacki, former president of USA Gymnastics and a past member of the FIG Executive Committee, on Facebook:
Here’s my 2 cents…
While having dinner with former FIG President Yuri Titov a number of years ago, we started talking about the Olympics. Yuri told him his toughest Olympic Games was Melbourne in 1956. When I asked why, he told me the boat trip from the Soviet Union to Australia took 20 days! He said they had a parallel bar and pommel horse on deck but the boat rocked so much it was difficult to train.
The USSR traveled to the Olympics on a boat!
I saw a quote in the LA Times where a USA Gymnastics coach said that this year’s team is the best women’s Gymnastics team ever. That made me cringe! Not because the USA Girls are not a great team, they are… they are the Olympic Champions. …
During the men’s all around finals, Al Trautwig of NBC said that Uchimura is “possibly the greatest male gymnast of all time.” As John McEnroe would say, “you can’t be serious!” Besides his errors during his performance in the team championships, what is the basis of such a statement other than NBC trying to drive up its ratings and get people to continue to watch the Games? While he did win the all-around, his performance was certainly less than stellar. Remember Vitaly Scherbo? He had a pretty decent Olympic Games in 1992. Go back a few years when Sawao Kato of Japan won back-to-back Olympic All-around titles and 8 Gold Medals in 3 Olympics. Again, my point; Sorry Al… no way to establish a real way to compare.
My final point … Our women’s team was great this year….Olympic Champions!! But so was the women’s team that won in 1996… Olympic Champions!
Which was better? Sorry… can’t realistically come up with a true answer… I can give you 100 differences between the two… starting with a pretty obvious one…
That was 16 years and 4 Olympics ago! Remember Nadia? She competed on a wood beam, with wood bars and on a floor that was like tumbling on a sting mat over concrete. How about the old wooden vaulting boards…. OK, no comment! Are you getting this?
Anyway, I would strongly suggest we praise our champions, applaud their accomplishments and be grateful for their talents. And we should also remember the many many great athletes that came before, that paved the way, that continued to progress and establish the new standards the sport enjoyed year after year. And for those that achieved the ultimate success as Olympic or World Champions, their awards, their talents and their accomplishments are timeless…. always will be… always should be.
Bring back the 10.0
It’s difficult to compare different eras of gymnastics, true. Far simpler is comparing athletes in the 100m dash. Click the graphic to watch a fantastic short video posted on the NY Times.
Usain Bolt vs. 116 years of Olympic sprinters
Uchimura IS the greatest gymnast all-time, though, factoring everything. 🙂
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