Word: gymnasts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Atlanta-based Correspondent B.J. Phillips, a member of the TIME contingent that covered the Winter Games in Sarajevo as well as the 1980 Winter Games at Lake Placid, marveled at the resilience of the American athletes, particularly the gymnasts. "It was old home week for me in Pauley Pavilion," says Phillips, who has been following U.S. gymnastic progress since the 1979 World Championships in Fort Worth. "It was all the more bittersweet because I had gone to Moscow to cover the 1980 Games they could not attend. After the men's team victory, I talked to Bart Conner. There...
...only competing against the U.S. teams but against the spectators as well. They are being demoralized before they even set foot on the field." But except at the boxing matches, where fighting any American must be a bloodcurdling prospect, few opponents have been blatantly rooted against. When Gymnast Koji Gushiken of Japan edged Peter Vidmar by 25 one-thousandths of a point in the all-around competition, and Gushiken cried the tears of a 27-year-old warrior who had been holding fast with more than chalk, not even Vidmar seemed to mind. The U.S. exhibition baseball team was able...
...close look at the Rumanians' medals, and told U.S. Women's Coach Don Peters, "Theirs are shinier than ours." Two nights later, everything that glittered was around Retton's neck. She won the gold medal in the all-around championship, the most coveted prize in gymnastics, since it marks the winner as the finest gymnast in the world. It is the crown Nadia Comaneci once wore, and Lyudmila Tourischeva, and which Olga Korbut, for all her charm, was too limited an athlete to achieve. Retton sealed her claim to it in the most dramatic duel...
...this unforgiving apparatus was added the obligatory flap over judging, without which no gymnastics meet would be complete. Like figure skating, gymnastics is a subjective sport: performance is in the eyes of the judges beholding it. National loyalties and geopolitical considerations being what they are, the beholder can cast a blind or a jaundiced eye, or an indulgent one, depending upon where the gymnast is from. During the compulsory exercises on the balance beam, U.S. Coach Peters lodged four protests over marks given to the Americans by Rumanian Judge Julia Roterescu. But having gone 4 for 6 in the complaint...
...crowd of laughing Rumanians, evidently not the soccer team, is kicking a spotted ball around a park bench. Nadia Comaneci, a guest of the L.A.O.O.C., is staying with her old team. "It is very bright and cheerful. I like everything very much," says the darling gymnast of Montreal. A Lebanese long jumper, Gabi Issa El Khouri, who could shave clear up to his eyes, is rolling them at the second most wonderful question put to him so far: Are Los Angeles and Beirut much different...