Great Moments in the Summer Olympics by Matt Christopher

Author:Matt Christopher [CHRISTOPHER, MATT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Nonfiction / Sports & Recreation - Olypmics
ISBN: 9780316202718
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2012-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Men’s Gymnastics

As a youngster, George Eyser was nearly killed when he was accidentally run over by a train. He survived, but his left leg was amputated and replaced with a wooden one. If his later athletic accomplishments are any indication, Eyser adjusted to the prosthetic limb without much trouble.

Eyser was the star on the United States men’s gymnastics squad at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri. These Games were unusual because the events took place over several months to coincide with the World’s Fair. Gymnastics were split into two categories, with half in early July and half in late October.

Eyser didn’t do well in July, but in the fall, he crushed his rivals. He took gold in the now discontinued rope-climbing event, shimmying up the twenty-five-foot length in 7 seconds flat. He tied for gold in the long horse vault. Considering they didn’t use a springboard in those days, this was somewhat miraculous for a man with a wooden leg. He added a third gold for his parallel-bars routine—and then two silvers and a bronze for a single-day total of six medals!

Men’s gymnastics events and equipment haven’t changed much since Eyser’s day. Competition is divided into three categories, the team combined, the individual all-around, and the individual events, and it takes place on six apparatuses: the high bar, parallel bars, rings, pommel horse, long horse vault, and floor exercise.

Of the three categories, a gold in the individual all-around is the most coveted. In 1908 and 1912, Al-berto Braglia of Italy became the first gymnast in Olympic history to repeat as champion in the category.

Forty years later, Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin won his first all-around. Chukarin was born in Ukraine in 1921. A budding gymnast, he swapped his athletic career to become a soldier when World War II broke out. Not long after he joined, he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp for four years. He survived to return home in 1945.

Chukarin resumed training and by 1948 was the dominant gymnast of the new Soviet Union. He didn’t compete in the London Games, however. The Soviet Union did not participate, and Japan and Germany had been banned as punishment for their part in the war.

They were all back for the 1952 Helsinki Games, and there, Chukarin rolled over his competition. He won the individual all-around, the pommel horse, and the vault, and he helped the Soviet Union win its first team combined gold medal. He also took silvers in the rings and parallel bars.

At age thirty-five, Chukarin won his second all-around gold at the 1956 Melbourne Games. He added golds in team combined and parallel bars, a silver in floor exercise, and a bronze in pommel horse to finish his Olympic career with a then record total of eleven medals.

If Chukarin was the king of the Melbourne Games, then Takashi Ono of Japan was his prince. In addition to a silver medal in the all-around, Ono won the horizontal bar event to become the first Japanese gymnast to earn an individual gold medal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.