Best and worst, 1976-now
Posted by Sarah!
Videos of 8 routines
My ideas on who’s great, and who made idiots out of themselves
It’s not easy compiling “Best” and “Worst” lists. Nobody’s going to agree with them, so you have to not care and go ahead and compile anyway. I will say that none of these are heavily analyzed – they’re just based on how I see it at the time.
And in the Best list below, I’ve really put my favorites more than the routines I think are actually technically the best.
In following the old saying, I’ll save the best for last. Here’s the worst.
The Worst
Beam
Alicia Sacramone, 2008 Olympics Team Finals
In truth there have been worse beam routines (Alexandra Marinescu in the Event Finals in Atlanta, et. al.), but I selected this one for two reasons: 1. Because it brought the U.S. to its collective, dysfunctional knees, and 2. Because it reminded me of how much I dislike Alicia’s gymnastics.
Vault
Elise Ray, 2000 Olympics All-Around first vault
Granted the vault was set too low, but other gymnasts managed to get through it unscathed. I chose this one because it just looks funny as hell.
Floor
Shawn Johnson, 2008 Olympic Trials
Shawn is/was the most un-artistic gymnast I’ve ever seen. People complain that great gymnasts such as Simona Amanar were “robotic” and “stiff.” Shawn makes Simona look like a prima ballerina, plus Simona wasn’t fat.
Bars
Vanessa Atler, 1998 U.S. Nationals Preliminaries
As most gym fans know, I could have used any of a number of Vanessa’s bars routines here. She was historically horrible on bars, and I attribute that to shit coaching, not to Vanessa’s inability to perform skills.
The Best
Bars
Kim Gwang Suk, 1991 World Championships Team Finals
In this routine, 9-year-old Kim shows exactly why she’s the most entertaining bars worker of them all. At four feet, four inches tall and 60 pounds, she had the perfect rubber-band body for this kind of exercise. Plus, because she’d just lost her front baby teeth, she encountered less wind-resistance every time she opened her mouth.
Vault
Shannon Miller, 1992 Olympics All-Around, first vault
This clip includes both vaults, but it’s the first one that’s magic. I haven’t seen every single vault ever performed in the history of gymnastics, but I’ve seen enough to be able to safely say this is the best. Period.
Floor
Oksana Omelianchik, 1985 European Championships Event Finals
Anybody who doesn’t fall in love with Oksana during this routine has serious psychological problems. It was everything a floor exercise is supposed to be: artistic, difficult, charming, innovative and entertaining. Too bad gymnastics is down the toilet today and we’ll never see another spectacle like this.
Beam
Nadia Comaneci, 1976 Olympics
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched this routine, and I have yet to spot a single instance during it where Nadia gives an indication that she realizes she’s on a four-inch-wide piece of wood. She works the beam like it’s flat ground. Her sense of gravity and her ability to move gracefully are both astounding.
So did you agree with all of my choices? Probably not. Good. Then please send your choices and include links in the comment box so we can look at them.
Sarah!
Posted on February 14, 2011, in Elite Gymnastics and tagged Alicia Sacramone, balance beam, floor exercise, gymnastics routines, Nadia Comaneci, Shannon Miller, Shawn Johnson, Simona Amanar, uneven bars, vault. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
1976 to present 2011 is a really wide span but here are some of the best that all of today’s elite gymnasts could learn a huge deal from:
1) 1988 Seoul Olympics: (USA) Phoebe Mills’ Bronze medal clinching beam event final. This was the first US Gymnastics medal in a non-boycotted Olympics (men’s or women’s), tying with Potorac of Romania. This happened in an Olympics where everyone was in a sense competing for the third place slot behind Shushounova and Silivas, even if they were actually better than Silivas or Shushounova (cough cough). Forget all that – the beam routine flows, flows, flows – it keeps moving at a quick, confident and commanding pace. It showcases great athleticism fused with artistry – perfect synthesis of the two. This is still in the days when Marta K just did what she does best – JUST COACH BEAM, and don’t speak.
2) 1976 Montreal Olympics: (USSR) Nellie Kim’s AA Vault – the first women’s vault to ever earn a 10. Full twisting tucked tsukahara. Absolutely perfect and way ahead of its times for difficulty. Chusovitina was competing the layout version in the 1990s nearly 20 years later.
3) 1989 World Champtionships Stuttgardt, West Germany: (USSR) Olesya Dudnik’s beam final for which she won silver (her team optional version was scored higher and done amidst air horns, cheering Germans and bad floor music on in the background) / Dudnik understood how to be light on the beam, keep moving and maximize difficulty:
2) 1989 WC Stuttgardt, West Germany: (CHN) Yang Bo’s beam final with the classic epic fail dismount – probably the last time we saw a serious athlete in pig tails, but boy did she understand the beam (except how to dismount it). Perhaps the best beam worker that never was, as she was plagued by constant dismount failures. One of only 3 female Chinese gymnasts I can name by name.
1) 1988 Seoul Olymics: (ROM) Daniela Silivas’ team compulsory floor exercise. The single best compulsory anything I have ever witnessed, forget the bad hair perm – it didn’t matter. The execution of this floor compulsory was one reason Silivas was given the benefit of the doubt in most of her Seoul scoring while others were on occasion passed over. This was absolute perfection.
Michelle,
Thanks so much for this! These are some AWESOME routines, too. It’s possible that together, we can start our own gymnastics school for “modern” gymnasts and use stuff like this to teach them. (That way we don’t have to do that much work – we just say, “See that? Go do it!”)
Sarah!
Sorry, here is the compulsory floor of Silivas:
This is absolutely stunning! Daniela just FLOATS through the air. It’s almost eerie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the 88 compusories and I would LOVE to watch them. Does anybody on youtube have them? Please send me a link to part 1 of whoever has it, if you can.
Sarah!
Seoul compulsories are all over YouTube, but in pieces though. I remember watching them on TV in 1988 on NBC and hearing that floor music over and over and over. I miss the cumpulsories, because they were an even measuring stick for all of the athletes in the competition – apples to apples comparison, not apples to oranges and you HAD to do all four events – there was no showing up and competing on one or two apparatus only (WTF is that?). You have to be able to demonstrate that you know the basics, understand the basics and can command the basics. In those days, 6 people had to put up routines and the 5 highest scores were kept, so the teams needed depth. There was none of this put up only 4 and keep 3 scores nonsense. I was appauled at Beijing – appauled on so many levels.
A school for modern gymnasts – yes, I would totally make my students study old competition broadcasts repeatedly. I’m disgusted that today’s US gymnasts clearly do not watch this stuff. It might make them realize how deficient and lacking they truly are. Notice, I didn’t select anything from the 1990s…if someone put a gun to my head for the 1990s, I’d have to pick an Onodi vault.
I know I can get pieces of the Seoul compulsories – I assume you mean separate routines. I’m trying to find a poster who has the whole thing up. Without the compulsories, gymnastics is just exalted tumbling practice.
You are sooooooooo right on how great it was that the girls had to do ALL the events. In today’s competitions, I look at the results where they show each team members’ scores on a grid, and I think, What the fuck – why’s there all these holes? It’s because virtually none of them are fit to be all-arounders. The best set-up ever was 7 on a team, 6 compete, 5 scores count.
Beijing was an embarrassment, period.
In our school, you could be in charge of film-watching classes and I could be in charge of whacking girls in the heads when they mouthed off and started acting like Americans.
Re: the 1990s: I like them, but I agree there weren’t a whole lot of routines that’ll go down in history. There was some good stuff in Barcelona. Amy Chow had some interesting bars routines. But so did Vanessa Atler.
Sarah!
I’m obviously not qualified on the subject, as I only did some amateur gymnastics as a teen. But I have to say I actually like Alicia Sacramone’s gymnastics. Maybe it’s because she’s such a feisty girl. I mean, after her failure in Beijing and being slammed for it by pretty much everyone it takes a strong mentality to come back from that and try again. I commend her for that and I hope she does well in 2012.
As for good gymnastics, I’m surprised noone mentioned Catalina Ponor. I mean sure, Nadia scored that perfect ten back in the day when a perfect 10 still existed, but in my opinion her gymnastics skills are not that incredible compared to what elite gymnasts do today. Ofcourse that was a different time so it’s not fair to expect anything else.
One of my favorite floor routines with her:
Beam:
She’s just so effortless it makes it look almost easy!
I’m sorry I took so damn long to reply here. Thank you for these videos. Catalina was always beautiful and elegant. I know Sacramone has a lot of fans, but I just can’t be one of them. She does have a lot of energy, but those knockers just bury me.
Sarah!
Here are 3 routines that i like most:
Aurelia Dobre in 1988 Seoul Olympic:
Sabina Cojocar in Massilia 2002:
And a young Yulia Lozhechko 2005 in France. Like Aurelia Dobre, she has an unique style that marks her:
All stunning, especially Dobre. Like I’ve said in other places, Aurelia with a hurt leg is better than almost anybody else with a perfect leg. Thanks for sending these – I hope everybody watches them.
Sarah!