Tell me all about Olga Korbut

She was everything.

Her other competitive highlights.

She was awesome.

Olga was the first world-renown female gymnast. She became a superstar in a way that few have become since. Many of Olga Korbut's fans disliked the cold, unemotional Nadia.

Thanks for posting. I loved her.

Funny that she would end up becoming the star, when her teammate is the one who won the overall gold medal. Yet nobody remembers her? Judging by this video, I can see why. She was not nearly as fun to watch.

Drew Barrymore in ET reminded me of Olga. It's the pigtails.

Nadia's first perfect 10 for comparison.

After moving to the US, she developed a drinking problem, got arrested for shoplifting, and was investigated for counterfeiting after fake cash was found in her son's house. She sold most of her medals and other memorabilia last year, but she also found a new husband and coaching career.

Olga was nothing! I was America's sweetheart!

That was an exciting bars routine to watch. I have never seen tricks like that in any of the recent Olympic routines!

Go choke on myexi pyedz, Kethy!

Olga was a real lady, unlike that whore bitch Nadia Comeneci.

Olga turned into a Klepto -

Didn't she box Tonya Harding, too?

She was the beginning of the 85 lb pixie esthetic in gymnastics of starving, stunted women who look like little girls.

R 11 A soviet gymnast broke her neck doing a more complicated flip. They banned the move and reconfigured the bars. I saw a documentary and when the gymnast fell and realized she was paralyzed she said she was relieved not to have to compete.

I had no idea that Olga competed at the same Olympics as Nadia in 1976. I wonder if she felt upstaged?

Here is some context as to why she became a fan favorite. This is the first time I've seen what a meltdown she had on the bars.

r19 Some girls just let the fame go to their head and can't handle adulthood. What a waste. Young girls with real talent develop lifelong skills like pediatric medicine in addition to being America's sweetheart. They then marry rich, but grounded. I know a few good surgeons if anybody is looking for a date. Not you Olga.

She changed and revolutionized gymnastics from what was once a mostly balletic sport performed by older women, and introducing daring and cutting-edge acrobatics. As someone up thread already mentioned, she popularized the pixie body type that is most capable of these skills, which has taken the sport in new directions, but there are also legit criticism of this.

She was no great shakes!

Why did that performance at OP not get a 10? Looked pretty perfect to me.

Little known fact: Olga Korbut was hired as a stunt double to do the crabwalk scene in "The Exorcist!"

bump

I love the 70s style of gymnastics. R11, the bars were much closer together back then, allowing gymnasts to compete the type of in-bar work you are seeing in OP's video. Nowadays, the women's bars are extremely far apart, making the event seem more like men's high bar. Just look at this routine from 2017. There are more high flying release moves now, though.

Olga opened up recently in an interview, commenting on the horrible abuse American gymnasts experienced at the hands of the team doctor.

Olga said that she and other female gymnasts were groomed for sexual abuse beginning at age 9-10. She also said that she and her fellow gymnasts were physically abused. She underwent many horrors during her training and performance years.

Who knows how many abuses those old Soviet and Romanian gymnasts had to endure at the hands of coaches back then? They were all under very strict training and dietary guidelines. Many of the American coaches, too.

[quote]R 11 A soviet gymnast broke her neck doing a more complicated flip. They banned the move and reconfigured the bars. I saw a documentary and when the gymnast fell and realized she was paralyzed she said she was relieved not to have to compete.

Was that Elena Mukhina? I remember seeing a rare photo of her in a wheelchair. The Soviets hushed her accident up and she just vanished from view. She died in 2006.

R29, I looked her up and yep, that's her. Here is a bar routine of hers back when she was mobile and performing dangerous tricks.

R23, the judges were not giving 'perfect' scores back then. Nadia was the first to get a 10 in Olympic competition.

Here is the full broadcast of the Olympic uneven bars final. Boy was that crowd upset with Olga's score!

I was surprised to read she actually didn't win the all around the year she became so famous. Apparently her appeal was that she was so young and cute and brought more personality to gymnastics than had previously been displayed. People fell in love with her pluckiness even though her medal total wasn't that high.

Nadia was really the one who wowed people with her skills and was the first to get the perfect scores.

Wow OP. I haven't thought about Olga in years! She was a sensation!

omg!

Olga was the shit. Nadia was the poor man's Olga, but she was more controvesial, so it was more about her ( being so young so short, escaping, becoming a US citizen etc) less about sports. Nadia became very famous but never had the aura Olga had

I saw Olga at a restaurant once and the poor dear looked a bit drunk.

Gymnastics was incredibly boring before Olga. Compare Olga's routine to this one from just four years prior.

Love her. She's one of my favorite performers. One of the few that bring "giving it your all" to life, whatever that "it" is. Nureyev is another example, among others.

She lacked a decent theme.

R38, I watched a few old videos of gymnastics from back in the day and I didn't get it. Seems like they just did a lot of standing around and posing. This woman in the video below won 18 Olympic medals, and held the record until Michael Phelps beat her. So yeah, thank God for Olga.

R40, Nadia's theme rocks.

Who is the jealous looking girl giving Nadia a bitchface throughout her routine, R42?

Olga. For a couple weeks, she was the worlds sweetheart - shirley temple and cindy lou who wrapped in to one adorable Soviet package -- back then, everyone watched the Olympics, so there wasnt a household in America that wouldn't have taken her in to escape the red menace. I think it stunned the Soviets more than anyone - Ludmilla was supposed to be the star -- I can still remember watching her first uneven parallel bar routine --- so electric and unique!!! The floor routine was spectacular-- the impish joy was transferred to American (and world) viewers. When she returned for the 76 games, she looked like 20 miles of bad road --- i have a feeling those 4 years were filled with relentless training - and it beat that joy and wonder in her into submission

Fuck you, R43!!

Nadia's Theme was actually first featured in the film "Bless the Beasts and the Children" a few years prior, but I guess it was later renamed after her.

R29, if you read about Mukhina's life, it was more than tragic. She was an orphan whose grandmother put her into gymnastics. The Soviet machine took notice of her natural abilities and put her in the training program. She was eventually paired with Viktor Klimenko, a top coach who had previously only worked with men gymnasts. After Nadia, the Soviets understood the desire for a gymnast who could perform the exciting stunts of an Olga, combined with the technical perfection of Nadia, but also with the balletic grace that was associated with Russian gymnastics. Mukhina checked all the boxes. She won the All around World Championship in 1978 over Nadia. In training after, she broke her leg but the Soviets got her out of the hospital before she was completely healed. She reinjured her leg and was hospitalized again and again, the Soviets pulled her out of the hospital before she was ready so she could train. It was likely a common occurrence within the Soviet sports system, but Mukhina had literally no one to speak for her. In 1979, the Romanians won the team competition at the World Championships and the Soviets wanted to make sure they took the team gold medal at their olympics in Moscow in 1980. Mukhina was pushed into harder training and one stunt, called a Thomas, was introduced into her floor routine. The Thomas involves several turns and spins before landing on your shoulders and back and then rolling into a standing position. Mukhina had been badly injured on the element before but one day in practice, she was told to do the stunt again after an especially hard training session. She landed face forward into the mat and broke her neck. Her thought when it happened? "I broke my neck. Good. Now I don't have to go to the Olympics."

Sad, r47!

It seems Olga and Nadia helped usher in the era of female gymnasts as pixies. Before them, the women had actual women's bodies.

Cool tricks

I was pluckier!

Kerri, you were shaped like a fire hydrant.

R47 thank you for the complete story.

R47, I can't even begin to imagine how terrible conditions must have been in a Soviet training camp in the 70s.

I loved Olgas fun smirky smile to the camera while performing on the balance beam during ABCs Wide World of Sports opening.

One of the most perceptive quotes about Olga came on a documentary about the Olympic boycott of 1980. "Although the Soviet sports machine is always in full gear, Olga Korbut did what no amount of propaganda could have ever done. She won the hearts of the world."

Mukhina's most famous quote: I often wished I could just lie down with no one to bother me. You should be careful what you wish for.

She won the silver medal on balance beam, second to Nadia, at the 1976 games. This is her routine.

You can compare it to Nadia's routine here.

Mukhina's four routines which won her the AA title in 1978. She was the first woman to do a full twisting double back somersault on floor in artistic gymnastics and dismounted beam with a double back, which was still used in Gold Medal beam performances twenty years later.

Thanks for posting that, R58.

Here is the woman who actually won gold in 1972, Olga's teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva. I'm meh about her and that style of gymnastics.

This routine also beat Olga's for gold in the event finals, and I don't see it...

Does she menstruate?

Oh my, R62, was that for real?

Speaking of Cathy Rigby, here is her routine that won a silver medal at the world championships. The first American woman to do so.

So Elena comes off that great showing and her coach says, we're going to make this harder.

She breaks her leg and her coaches don't think, let's let her heal. They send her out to do the more difficult stunts.

She's bullied, underfed, has a partly good leg, exhausted, under constant pressure. Ends up with a broken neck.

Poor kid. Thank you for posting her story and her performance.

At the 1978 Worlds, Marcia Frederick beat Mukhina and Comaneci to become the first US World Champion. She did it on uneven bars.

Talk about a depressing story. Frederick alleged she was abused by her coach Rich Carlson. She said he forced her to perform oral sex on her, including the day of the Championship Finals in 1979. Her main coach, a dragon lady named Muriel Grossfeld would eventually have to fire Carlson after finding them together, but would eventually hire him back. Frederick said that when she told Grossfeld, she simply got in her car and drove away. After telling her dad, he simply stopped talking to her. He attended a ceremony for her honoring the 1980 Olympic athletes who didn't compete but left without speaking to her.

Here is her championship performance.

Here's Marcia's story. This happened to a World Champion so you could imagine it happened to many others.

Sad, R67.

Olga was an innovator, but Nadia was perfect. Seven perfect 10s in one competition! The first to ever achieve a perfect score.

Tracee Talavera. Ancient. Fell over every appartus

lol R70! Is that a haiku?

I wonder what Larry Nassar is doing right now?

I love 70s gymnastics.

Great thread. Bump.

[quote]r29 Was that Elena Mukhina? I remember seeing a rare photo of her in a wheelchair. The Soviets hushed her accident up and she just vanished from view. She died in 2006.

There is an actual interview about the incident with the paralyzed Elena Mukhina HERE:

Women's gymnastics was so boring pre-Olga that they could compete without messing up their teased and sprayed hairdos.

Saw a documentary about her 18 years ago, was fascinated.

Elena Mukhina died at 46 after being left paralyzed most of her life, that's just horrible.

Olga Korbut's routine on the unevens was electrifying; everybody just screamed when they saw it. When Nadia came around and got 10s, was she more technically perfect? because she wasn't nearly as interesting to watch.

R79, it was about the flight of the Korbut flip. Nadia's release was just not as exciting even though it was more difficult. The other elements Nadia did were definitely more technically perfect so the 10s were justified. Although the event was originally about swing, all the release moves the girls are doing make the event more fan friendly.

Olga had charisma and star quality!

R73, me too.

Is that Czech gymnast Vera Calavska at R76?

Ludmila Tourischeva, Floor Exercise, 1972 Olympics.

Ludmilla Tourescheva, Floor Exercise, 1972 Olympics.

Olga Korbut, Floor Exercise, 1972 Olympics.

Did Vera Caslavska's hair throw her off balance in any of the events?

Love her. Great thread. Thanks

r28, my sisters were each into gymnastics and ice skating in the 70s. My parents made them watch the Olympics with all of the Soviet-block teams as cautionary tales about the athletes' miserable lives, how they were taken away from their families and forced to compete for the state, to make sure my sisters never took it too seriously.

R89, that cautionary tale didn't exactly take here because the US often did the exact same things only adding serial molestation to it.

Olga was fantastic and innovative but Nadia knew how to compete and didn't crumble under pressure.

Olga's faliure on Uneven Bars on Munich AA final must be one of the most absurd mistakes from an amazing gymnast ever

Wasn't she being molested before and after each event? That has to effect performance : (

You have to wonder what made THAT day so different, though - -

I remember the name from when I was a kid, but I don't think I'd ever seen these performances before. I see now why she was a sensation.

I remember (at least I think I do) that Jim McKay described Olga's floor exercise as looking like "a happy child playing in the sun..." Perhaps it was not the clip at R86, but another one? I will check YouTube!!

I adore the artists of the 60s and early 70s where you can totally see the ballet training of the gymnast in her floor exercise.