i quit sports!

rare skills: Yurchenko loop + Teza

The Teza should be an F. It is so difficult to lose sight of the beam and add a full twist without smashing your head onto the beam and absolutely no one performs it (understandbly so, it is a crazy skill)! If the FIG wanted to encourage originality, this is the perfect skill to upgrade.

Honestly with the open-ended code this skill is just not worth doing. There are so many built in deductions for almost anyone attempting this skill that no matter what the rating, you’re going to lose as much as you gain from doing it because it’s almost impossible to do without a ton of form errors. No one does it cleanly enough to make it worthwhile under this type of code where execution is so important. 

But it is so flipping cool, and so are her other eponymous skills

It is really cool! I loved watching her. Overall I love what the open-ended code has done for the sport, but I do sometimes miss some of the more unique skills that have gotten pushed out as the sport evolves.

A Nellie and Nadia pic

Planche Handstand Mounts

Oksana Omelianchik - 1985 Worlds - Team Competition - Beam

Score: 9.900

the rhythm and aggressivity with which she moves are mindblowing, and in the same time she’s so precise and accurate, her first pause of the entire routine comes just right before her dismount, this is a piece of art

Tamara Lazakovich (URS). FX. Munich 1972.

With the current system (the scores from preliminars don’t count at the all around final) she would have won the Olympic Games in 1972. It’s a pity that her life after gymnastics was so miserable. // Con el sistema actual (las notas de las calificaciones no cuentan en la final individual) habría ganado los Juegos Olímpicos de 1972. Una pena que su vida después de la gimnasia fuese tan desgraciada.

Lazakovich’s story is one of the saddest in gymnastics.

She was the European Champion going into the Olympics (tied with Tourischeva) and after the compulsory round in Munich she was leading the AA QF over Karin Janz, but the Soviet coaches forced her to do a more difficult vault in optionals (a fhs half, very difficult for her era, and one she didn’t train enough to have it prepared for competition) to secure that she wasn’t going to beat Tourischeva or Korbut in the AA (as individual scores during team competition also counted for AA in that time), and sadly fell on her knees. She ended up 4th in qualifyings, and because of this, even if she got the highest score during the AA final (with the New Life Rule she would be Olympic Champion) she had to settle for bronze. Some also mantain that she should have won the Olympic Gold on floor, but the judges decided to favor her more popular teammates Korbut and Tourischeva (I don’t agree completely with this, but I do think Lazakovich was way more artistic, precise and expressive than both Tourischeva and Korbut). After Munich she got severely injured, but didn’t receive support from the Soviet system. She then worked as a coach, but didn’t have success and seems she got fired. Became alcoholic and, when her parents died, without family, work or friends, she had to live in poverty, stealing in houses or shops. Finally she got caught one day stealing in a house and her story became public. She ended up dying in prison before she even turned 37.

1 // Maria Gorokhovskaya, Soviet Union - competed at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, where she won the all-around title and 4 silver medals in the EF.

2 // Larissa Latynina, Soviet Union - not only did she win more than one Olympic medal in each event, but she is also the most decorated female gymnast in the history, having won 18 medals (14 individual).

3 // Vera Čáslavská, Czechoslovakia - she is a 2-time Olympic all-around champion, but what’s even more impressive is the fact that she won an Olympic title in every single individual event.

4 // Daniela Silivas, Romania - despite not being the Olympic all-around champion (she “only” took a silver), she still won medals in every event final at the 1988 Olympics, including three event titles.