Category: Olympics

Věra Čáslavská died in 2016 at the age of 74.

A sports school in Prague will bear Caslavska’s name as of the next school year.

Winner of a total of 11 Olympic medals, seven of them gold, Caslavska captured the All-around at the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games, joining Soviet Larissa Latynina as the only female gymnast to to have won back-to-back titles. No other woman has won as many individual Olympic gold medals. …

1968 Olympics

During the medal ceremonies for Balance Beam, won by Soviet Natalia Kuchinskaya, and Floor Exercise, where she shared the podium with Larissa Petrik, Caslavska turned her head to the right and down as the Soviet anthem was played, a gesture widely interpreted as a political protest. She returned home to Czechoslovakia to find herself spurned by the government, which did not initially allow her to work as a coach and blocked her from receiving donors. …

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Caslavska was finally recognized as a national heroine. …

FIG

Click PLAY or watch her political statement on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch the IOC video on Facebook.

related – I think people should just stick to their profession, that is, unless they agree with me politically 🙂

GymnasticsVille has a new feature where they are counting down the top 64 Olympians all time.

The first instalment:

64. Alexander Naddour
63. Phoebe Mills
62. Peter Kormann
61. Jair Lynch
60. Kai Wen Tan
59. Joesph Hagerty
58. Elise Ray
57. Alexander Artemov
56. Kristen Maloney
55. Tasha Schwirret Warren
54. Justin Spring
53. Raj Bhavsar
52. Jamie Dantzscher

Click PLAY or watch Tasha’s Beam on YouTube.

Schwikert Warren helped the U.S. women win a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympic Games. At the 2001 World Gymnastics Championships she won a team gold medal. Schwikert Warren is a two-time U.S. senior national all-around champion and a two-time NCAA all-around national champion.

See more videos – #GymnastRank USA Olympians Nos. 52-64

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