Word: gymnast
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America's top women, they showed that they can now hold their own with anyone in the world. That includes the absent Soviets, who defeated the Rumanians in the 1983 world championships and whose top gymnast, Natalia Yurtchenko, would have been a favored contender for individual honors in these Olympics. Julianne McNamara is the best there is on the uneven bars. Her line is as perfect as a ballerina's, and she flows so lightly from one bar to the next, one movement to another, that the bars sing for her. She got a 10 to prove...
Thanks to such razzle-dazzle, Retton led the field at the beginning of the all-around competition with a cumulative score of 39.525 points. Just behind her, with 39.375, was Rumania's leading gymnast, Ecaterina Szabo, 17, a smoothly solid performer who rarely makes mistakes. Tied for third place were another Rumanian, Laura Cutina, 16, and McNamara, with...
...only performed risky maneuvers flawlessly but managed to make her narrow ground seem like a stage for the Bolshoi Ballet. At one point she rolled off four consecutive backward handsprings, one more than the beam seems capable of containing and two more than any other gymnast tried. Retton's performance on the uneven bars, on the other hand, was, for her, mediocre. The judges gave her a 9.85, and the score was tied...
Retton, in fact, is the exemplar of what Bela Karolyi calls "the new kind of gymnast." Says he: "She's strong and powerful and athletic; not a little flower, a little flyer." Karolyi, who discovered and trained Comaneci and presided over the early development of Retton's principal rivals from Rumania, Szabo and Agache, knows a trend when he sees one. In his 4-ft. 9-in., 92-lb. dynamo, he knows he has found a star...
...lived with a local family whose daughter is also a top-flight gymnast. The relationship she formed with her coach was and is close, as any television viewer could see last week when she veered off to confer with him, and get encouraging hugs, before every step on the arena floor. They have even come to gesture alike, with Mary Lou pounding a fist into a palm when a routine goes well and summoning a Balkan shrug when it does not. Says Karolyi: "It's an excellent kid, Mary Lou. She's so powerful physically...