Skip to main content

Flashback to 1972 ... Olga Korbut wins the BBC's International Sportswoman of the Year Award

Image
By
I remember Olga receiving this award back in 1972 ... I was 13 years old. It was before the time of video recorders, personal computers and Youtube, and therefore a rare opportunity to savour those amazing moments from Munich again.

I was so thrilled to see Olga Korbut on my little black and white TV screen, collecting her BBC award as International Sportswoman of the Year. Gymnastics was new to me, Olga had opened my eyes to the sport, they have never closed.

There was something so special about Olga. Those moments from 1972 never lose their freshness.

With many thanks, once again, to Novosti, for reminding me of this great moment.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous10 December 2012 at 00:21

    Ludmilla was a much better gymnast. She did not get the attention she deserved.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous17 December 2012 at 15:07

    no, olga was better. She carried out exercise never before seen, she is the "Mother of gymnastic".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous30 September 2020 at 09:36

    I would love to transport the Munich Olga to the Rio Games and watch her and Simone competing in the AA together. What a competition that would be! Imagine Olga in today's gymnastics, free of the chains of the oppressive USSR federation and restrictions that tried to suppress her difficulty and being able to really be rewarded for all she was capable of.

    We always hear future champions named as the "Next Olga" and "Next Mary Lou" but I feel like both Shawn Johnson and Simone Biles are almost "Next Olgas" except they were both able to have the success Olga SHOULD have had if not for everything with her coach and federation and injuries. They both have outrageous difficulty in comparison to the rest of the field - and in Simone's case, original trick difficulty like Olga did - and the crowd appeal for their personalities.

    I love that even though most gymnasts are too young to remember her anymore, they still carry on the legacy she started of originality, pushing the envelope while appealing to the crowd's hearts.

    Thank you Olga, for all the gifts you brought to gymnastics.

    ReplyDelete
  4. natalia frolova4 January 2021 at 02:11

    yes, I remember too, Olga Korbut gave great joy to alot of people around the world including me.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maria Filatova: Russian Sparrow Made in the USSR

By
Maria Filatova – the first ever picture taken of her doing gymnastics! By kind permission of Maria Filatova Kourbatova My first memory of Maria Filatova is a little girl with huge, white ribbons in her hair, so tiny she seemed to have to stand on tiptoe to be able to see over the balance beam.  At 4’ 6” tall, she was the smallest competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, yet she was already part of the Soviet senior team, competing alongside such established stars as Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Elvira Saadi and Olga Korbut.  The ‘Siberian Sparrow’, trained in Leninsk-Kuznetsk by Innokenty Mametyev since a very early age, celebrated her 15 th birthday on the 19 th July 1976, the day of the team final.  That night, she slept with her first – not her last - Olympic gold medal beneath her pillow. For all her cuteness, Maria Filatova was a fearsome gymnast and competitor.  If the crowd were awed by the pyrotechnics of Romanian technician Nadia Comaneci, they we...
5 comments
Read more

‘My daughter likes gymnastics. For us, this is the big success’. Aliya Mustafina talks to Match TV

By
Via VK.com.  Google translate A big interview with Aliya Mustafina was published on MATCH!. We provide a small excerpt below, and the full version is available on the website at the link below  ❓ Aliya, you are now the head coach of the junior artistic gymnastics team. What does your typical day look like? 💜 My current life is similar to what it was when I was competing. In the morning, I have breakfast and go to work by 9:00, we train for four hours, have lunch, rest and train for another three hours. During the training camp, the athletes live at the base. They live and train on the same territory. ❓ Do you manage the gymnasts' personal trainers or do you evenly distribute the responsibilities? 💜 We work in contact with the personal trainers, I listen to their opinions. For example, if the trainer believes that their athlete needs to be given a little rest or do fewer repetitions of a particular exercise, we do so. ❓ Describe the current generation of children. Do they nee...
3 comments
Read more

The State of Gymnastics - 'Soviet' or 'American' style?

By
Lioudmilla Tourischeva, 1972 Olympic All Around champion in artistic gymnastics, was held up as an example of the ideal Soviet citizen.  Here she coaches one of the Soviet Union's leading gymnasts from the 1980 Olympics, Natalia Shaposhnikova The Soviet Union had a genius for lifting sport beyond the textbook, injecting the aesthetic where previously only goals had been in plain view.   This was not only manifest in gymnastics.  Do you remember the ‘Russian Five’, the players who elevated ice hockey to a creative sporting display, mesmerising their opponents and spectators with intricate patterns of play, so rhythmic and entertaining that they could have been set to music?   In gymnastics, a sport where the aesthetic counted as much as the outcome, it was this ability to create spectacle out of competition that resulted in the most extraordinary athletic performances.  The ‘Golden Era’, most commonly understood to cover the years from 1952-1...
15 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more