Gymnasts display so many difficult skills with such grace that it’s easy to forget just how tricky the sport really is. There are times, of course, when things don’t go quite as planned and a Blooper is born….

Note to Gymbyte: don’t watch 0:16! I know you can’t stand to see this. Oh yeah, and there’s a close-up of the same thing at 3:27.

Funniest Bloopers:

Bronze: American Kristen Maloney loses her air sense while warming up a triple twist and kicks out of it (1:07).

Silver: A gymnast fights hard to stay on the beam (3:17). Who is this? I feel like I’ve seen this before. It also reminds me of a funny beam fall by Soviet Natalia Frolova at the 1986 Kraft International.

Gold: At 3:20, the uneven bars come crashing down as Lyudmila Tourischeva from the Soviet Union completes her dismount at the 1975 World Cup (see “Raise the Bar”). She managed to win despite this apparatus malfunction.

Most Heartwrenching Bloopers:

Bronze (3-way tie): Yelena Zamolodchikova of Russia (1:10) finds herself travelling backwards during this punch front at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. This error cost her the All-Around Gold medal. Ukrainian Viktoria Karpenko (1:33) trips over her own toe after successfully landing an Arabian double front, punch front at the same competition. Chinese Yang Bo falls yet again during a beam event final that she could have won, this time at the 1992 Olympics (1:38).

Silver: Vanessa Atler of the United States (0:20) lands slightly out-of-bounds on her double layout, and hurts her ankle while punching into the front tuck. Despite being a favourite throughout the quadrennium for Olympic glory, this injury and subsequent mental blocks proved to be too much. The 2000 Games went on without her.

Gold: At 3:55, Soviet Olga Strazheva injures her knee at the 1988 Olympic Games, ending her competition.

Most Horrifying Bloopers:

Bronze: Guy doing a triple back “dismount” on to the high bar (2:14). This video is probably second only to Brian Meeker as the most-watched gymnastics blooper on the internet (4:14)!

Silver: At the Dortmund Team World Championships in 1994, Romanian Gina Gogean (0:16 and 3:27) suffered a horrendous fall on the balance beam, but came back a couple of days later as a leader in the Gold medal effort.

Gold: Yukio Iketani of Japan is lucky he wasn’t seriously injured when he missed this Gaylord at the 1991 World Championships in Indianapolis (3:29).

Most Ghastly Technique in a Blooper:

Bronze: Hmm…any contenders? Perhaps Puerto Rican Eileen Diaz (3:45) with her botched full to leap at the 1996 Olympics.

Silver: Allana Slater of Australia, at 0:05, deserves the benefit of the doubt, though, given the vault situation at the 2000 Olympic Games.

Gold: The double layout at 2:11. I have no idea who is performing this.

Textbook Falling Technique in a Blooper:

0:46. Chinese Fan Ye at the 2003 World Championships. It’s a pity she finished last in the bars finals…she has such exquisite form!

Here’s another video showcasing some funny falls. I hope no one was hurt. A first for me: seeing a high bar snap in half at 0:31!

Gymnastics bloopers are only funny as long as the gymnast was not injured in any way. Of course, mistakes can still be devastating if they occur at a major competition for which the gymnast has trained long and hard. Here are two bloopers that are not the slightest bit amusing. The first is Hwang Bo Sil, a gymnast from North Korea. This accident took place in 1989. Fortunately, she made a full recovery and went on to compete at the 1992 Olympic Games. The second video is of a Chinese male (I haven’t been able to identify this gymnast!). Three-quarter saltos such as these are now banned in women’s gymnastics, but the men continue to train and perform the popular Thomas salto. You’ll notice that the gymnasts continue to struggle when they should have been instructed to lie down and stay still in case of spinal injury or concussion. I find it appalling that the male was allowed to complete his routine.

Here’s another neck injury where the coach knew exactly what to do, and Cosmina Paulescu was immediately immobilized after crashing her double pike bars dismount at the 2005 Romanian National Championships. She has since recovered.

With all the difficult skills being performed in this sport today, it’s amazing that it is still a rare occurrence to hear of a permanent spinal injury. Knock on wood…let’s keep it that way!

Just for a bit of fun, let’s look back at gymnastics comedian Paul Hunt. He was at his competitive peak in the early 1970s, but took to a different kind of performance in the 1980s: creating parodies of women’s gymnastics. He performed in exhibitions under such names as Pauletta Huntescu (ROM) and Paulette Huntinova (URS).

The following beam routine is set to the floor exercise music of Oksana Omelianchik, who was present at the 1988 USA vs USSR meet. Paulette Huntinova is also wearing the yellow leotard of her Soviet team.

Look carefully in the audience and you’ll notice stars Natalia Laschenova, Oksana Omelianchik and Mary Lou Retton enjoying the comedy.

Vault isn’t the only culprit when it comes to equipment problems (see “The Faulty Vault”). There have been quite a few incidents on uneven bars in which a cable has snapped during a routine and the entire apparatus has collapsed. Fortunately in all three cases I found, no one was injured…just a little bit shaken up!

Ludmilla Tourischeva’s fall is perhaps the best known case of such an occurrence. During the 1975 World Cup, the bars fell just as the Soviet gymnast completed her routine. It didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest, and she ended up winning the event.

Natalie Foley, an NCAA gymnast who competed for Stanford, pulled the cables loose as she prepared

for a Shaposhnikova a few years ago.

An equipment failure happened again just last year, this time to Naoual Ouazzani Chahdi, a junior gymnast competing in the 2008 Dutch Trials for the upcoming European Championships.

When the bars are set properly, however, this event can be beautiful one. Feast your eyes upon the next video, and watch how the apparatus has changed throughout the years. The uneven bars started out as men’s parallel bars, with one bar set higher than the other. Note how the wooden oval-shaped bars extend beyond the posts! As years go by, the bars become rounder and more flexible, and they are set further apart as the gymnasts’ skill levels increase. The elements performed on the event have changed drastically, and some of the composition from past decades make me chuckle (0:20).

Uneven Bars Developments (1950s to 2005)

No mention of the uneven bars would be complete without a shout out to the most decorated champion of all time, “The Queen,” Russian Svetlana Khorkina. She managed to win two uneven bars titles at the Olympic Games, five at the World Championships and six at the European Championships.

What are your favourite skills or routines of all time? Please post a Comment!

Quick, who were the Olympic All-Around Champions in 2000? Alexei Nemov and, um, Simona Amanar? It always takes me an extra second to remember that Amanar’s name is officially at the top of the list. With 50% of the field competing on a vault that was set 5 cm too low, the playing field was hardly fair. American Elise Ray suffered a scary crash when she missed the vault entirely in warm-ups, and then proceeded to fall on both vaults during the biggest competition of her life. “It really scared me. I felt something was wrong but I didn’t know what it was. I was so disappointed. It carried over to the next three events. I can’t believe a setting could be wrong at the Olympic Games.” (source: International GYMNAST magazine, November 2000)

Five of the gymnasts from the affected rotations did decide to take another attempt: Elise Ray (who by then had already fallen off the balance beam), Sara Moro (ESP), Galina Tyryk (UKR), Lisa Mason (GBR) and Jana Komrskova (CZE).

Svetlana Khorkina of Russia, a gold medal contender, crashed on vault in the first rotation and then found herself in the wrong mental mindset before her best event: the uneven bars. She then fell on a Stalder-Tkatchev on an event where she was already a 4-time World Champion and the defending Olympic Champion. It was only after the disastrous bars routine that Khorkina was advised of the equipment error in her previous rotation. She chose not to repeat the vault.

After seeing several mistakes on vault during the preliminary rounds, one cannot help but wonder if perhaps the vault was set to the wrong height at this time as well. There were several crashes not characteristic of an Olympic Games to which the gymnasts have devoted years of their training. Here is a montage posted by maloneystibiarod. You’ll notice that every single one of these gymnasts underrotates the vault due to insufficient block off the horse.

2000 Sydney Olympic Gymnastics Vault Crashes – Was the vault too low in prelims?

0:05 to 0:16 Elise Ray misses her hands in warm-ups

0:17 to 0:26 Her competition vaults

0:27 to 0:34 Svetlana Khorkina’s timing is off

0:35 to 0:37 The vault height is reset

0:41 to 0:51 Allana Slater (AUS) shows horrendous technique, form and execution (totally atypical of her usual gymnastics!). She was the first gymnast to notice the incorrect vault setting.

0:52 to 1:00 Liu Xuan (CHN) underrotated her Yurchenko-1.5 and could have seriously injured her knees

1:01 to 1:03 Brooke Walker (AUS) actually overrotated her vault

1:04 to 1:20 Chinese Kui Yuanyuan’s Olympic Games were over after this vault

1:21 to 1:33 Slater’s second vault is even worse than the first. She’s lucky she wasn’t hurt (and that the judges didn’t give her a 0.000 for not having her feet touch the ground first!)

1:34 to 2:24 Kristen Maloney (USA) hurts her leg on the first vault but prepares for her second vault like a trooper.

In addition to the vaulting error, there was of course the whole fiasco surrounding Andreea Raducan, the Romanian stripped of her All-Around Gold after pseudoephedrine from cold medicine was found in her system. I don’t think most gymnastics fans would believe that this substance could possibly have given her an advantage over the competition. In fact, it is no longer listed as banned substance by the IOC, and yet her name has been removed from Olympic All-Around records. It’s a pity that due to the faulty vault setting and the pseudoephedrine scandal, Amanar’s Olympic win will always have a large asterisk beside it.

Here’s a great montage posted by mfinger that pretty much sums up the All-Around event at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games: some great gymnastics, some botched vaults, some unexpected errors on floor…and China’s first medal in the All-Around, courtesy of Liu Xuan!

Sydney – Khorki, Zamo and Karpenko’s disaster

0:04 Simona Amanar (ROM)

0:22 Yelena Zamolodchikova (RUS)

0:34 Andreea Raducan (ROM)

0:48 Svetlana Khorkina (RUS)

1:14 Standings after the first rotation: Khorkina in the lead

1:17 Amanar

1:25 Zamolodchikova

1:43 Raducan

1:54 Khorkina

2:15 Adjusting the vault to the proper height

2:20 Viktoria Karpenko (UKR)

2:46 Standings after the second rotation: Zamolodchikova in the lead

2:48 Raducan

2:57 Khorkina

3:15 Karpenko

3:34 Amanar

3:51 Karpenko

4:31 Raducan

Interesting side notes: Raducan was one of the gymnasts to vault on the incorrect setting during the All-Around, but she still managed to score 9.706! Even though her Gold medal was taken from her, she was allowed to keep her Silver vault medal a couple of days later, as the pseudoephedrine had cleared her system by this point.

Last week I witnessed a performance of The National Acrobats of China with my sister, Gymbyte. It was a fantastic show, and I could tell by their technique that many of the performers were former gymnasts. I wonder if there are any well-known names among them.

One of my favourite acts was the Hoop Diving, where the guys did all sorts of flips through hoops that appeared to be at least 8 feet off the ground. Most of the acrobats went through the hoop on the pre-flight, but the last guy went through on the post-flight. One gymnast even did a full-twisting salto through the hoop! I also loved the Icarian Acrobatics, where the gymnasts flipped on each others’ feet, and the Grand Acrobatics & Martial Arts act which included swords and a huge red flag.

The ladies demonstrated tremendous talent as well, especially the one who continued to pedal around the stage while 10 other acrobats hung off her bicycle! There was another performer who simultaneously balanced decorative ornaments on both feet, both hands and her head, all whilst moving into various contortion poses. Many of the poses performed by the ladies reminded me of Sports Acro, and as always, I loved the one-handed handstand act which always makes me think of Jackie Bender!

Many of the acts were not so much acrobatics but equally impressive skills, such as balancing spinning plates on sticks, juggling straw hats, bouncing large spools on a string, and balancing huge Chinese vases on the head. Such control is required to master these acts!

Check out a video of highlights from their show:

The National Acrobats of China