The Ordeal
The Cold War stage
The Soviet Union entered the Olympics in 1952 and soon became a gymnastics power. Larisa Latynina won 18 Olympic medals, a record that stood for decades. Gymnasts became symbols in a contest between nations as much as a contest between athletes.
Korbut and Comaneci
At the 1972 Munich Games, Olga Korbut of the Soviet Union charmed audiences and made gymnastics a television favourite. Then, in Montreal in 1976, fourteen-year-old Nadia Comaneci of Romania scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics. The scoreboard could only show three digits, so it displayed 1.00.
Judging under pressure
As the stakes grew, so did the arguments over scoring. After a disputed result on the parallel bars at the 2004 Athens Games, the sport replaced the 10 maximum with an open-ended scoring system in 2006, splitting a score into difficulty and execution.
The darkest chapter
The hardest trial was off the mat. In the 2010s it came to light that Larry Nassar, a team doctor for USA Gymnastics, had abused hundreds of athletes. He was sentenced in 2018 to decades in prison. The gymnasts who spoke up changed the sport's attention to athlete safety and welfare.