Category: history

Victor Levinkov invented Yurchenko

I’m one of those who feel we should resist calling out mainstream media when they make mistakes.

Bite your tongue for a few months. Let’s take advantage of increased attention.

After Tokyo, popular media will go back to mostly ignoring Gymnastics.

Natalia Yurchenko:

“This vault is in the code of points under my own name.

Indeed, I was the first gymnast to do this vault during an official competition. It was in Moscow during the Competition in 1982. …

Few people know that the first gymnast who performed this vault was a male gymnast!

It was invented by Russian gymnast Victor Levinkov during a national competition in Former USSR. 

But this vault was not well accepted in the male Russian gymnastics. So my trainer has decided that I should do it and I began to learn it.

First I thought that my coach has gone crazy and wanted me to break my neck. …

NataliaYurchenko.com

Click PLAY or watch Natalia in 1982 on YouTube.

Yurchenko on Simone

I was lucky enough to see Natalia Yurchenko compete in person. She instantly became one of my favourite gymnasts.

Natalia was the first woman to compete her eponymous vault, at 1982 Moscow News.

The element was controversial at first, Yurchenko explained. Another parallel to Biles’ daring innovations.

“There were a lot of debates to allow it or not to allow it,” Yurchenko recalls. “I performed it in America, and the American judges, some of them, were really against it because it seemed way too dangerous …

A boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles meant Yurchenko never got the chance to compete her element at the Olympics.

Natalia Yurchenko on Simone Biles’ feat: “I was dreaming about seeing it”

Gold Over America tickets

This is the first Gymnastics tour I’ve been excited about in … decades.

Tickets go on sale June 11th.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Simone_Biles/status/1397990053889122304

Simone wins Classic – RESULTS

Simone Biles 58.400

  1. Jordan Chiles 57.100
  2. Kayla DiCello 56.100
  3. Grace McCallum 55.100
  4. Aleah Finnegan 54.150
  5. Leanne Wong 54.100
  6. Skye Blakely 54.000
  7. Emily Lee 53.900
  8. Kara Eaker 53.250
  9. MyKayla Skinner 53.050

Simone competes Yurchenko Double Pike

Making HISTORY … again.

Amazing.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It’s this kind of thing that keeps the greatest of all time motivated.

Nancy Armour – Simone Biles maintains gold standard despite 19-month layoff between competitions

Simone – shock and disbelief

Many male gymnasts have done Yurchenko Double Pike into the PIT.

On to competition mats, very few.

None this easily.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

Simone’s Yurchenko Double Pike

On competition mats.

EASY.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

Kerri Strug biopic ‘Perfect’

… The film is an intimate and unflinching portrait of grit and determination, Perfect charts the story behind Kerri Strug’s historic Olympic vault to secure America’s first ever gymnastics team gold. …

Deadline

Let’s hope they tell the TRUE story.

This will put Bela Karolyi back under the media spotlight.

1969 NCAA Champions Iowa

Iowa men’s gymnastics ended its final season this month, meaning the 1969 Hawkeyes stand as the program’s only national championship team. …

Men’s gymnastics has been an NCAA-sanctioned sport at the UI since 1922. …

… “That’s when, for the first time that season, all of us hit our routine,” McCanless said. “There were no breaks, minor or major.” …

‘Sadly, I feel that we’re all now just ghosts’: 1969 men’s gymnastics Hawkeyes stand alone as national champions
Keith McCanless competes on the pommel horse. McCanless was inducted into the Iowa Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011. (Photos by Dick Taffe)

History of Trampoline

Greg Roe posted a long, entertaining interview with legendary builder Ron Munn.

I learned a lot.

Ronnie, Pan American Games Trampoline Champ, worked with George Nissen, the co-inventor of the Trampoline.

Ronnie eventually married George Nissen’s daughter, Dagmar.

George and the famed Larry Griswald at University of Iowa constructed the first trampoline.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.