when girls competed Rings at Olympics

Dvora Meyers in 2012 posted an interesting and entertaining article on the history of Women’s Gymnastics:

… I spoke with Laddie Bakanic, 88, who had been a member of the 1948 U.S. women’s gymnastics team that won a team bronze medal at the Olympics and performed on the “flying rings” as they were known in her day.

“When I was on the flying rings and I had to leave go I was scared cause there was nothing there but a cotton mat on the ground,” she recalled, adding that there were male spotters hovering nearby just in case. …

Female Gymnasts Used to Compete on the Rings, But the Game Changed

Late 1970s at Santa Monica Gymfest in California, girls and guys were still training the long defunct Swinging Rings.

And Rings is NOT at all the only historical surprise. Here’s Olympic medalist and USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame artistic gymnast Clara Schroth Lomady, Captain of the 1948 U.S. Women’s Team. On the Parallel Bars.

related – Swinging Rings World Record 2011