Category Archive: Gymnastics

The Great Czech Gymnast Vera Caslavska Passes Away Part 2: The Activist

vera-caslavska_mexico-city

Vera Caslavska was dominant at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. She won gold in the all arounds, the vault, asymmetric bars and the floor exercise. She also took silver in the beam and team event. When Caslavska was about to go up to receive her gold medal in the floor exercise, the famed Mexican Hat Dance performance, she learned quite abruptly that the floor exercise score of the Soviet Union’s Larisa Petrik was increased, resulting in a tie for gold.

When Caslavska and Petrik stood side by side, listening to the national anthem of the Soviet Union, Caslavska “stood with her head down and turned away in a silent but unmistakable protest.” The Mexico City Olympics were in October 1968. Earlier that year, Alexander Dubcek was elected First Secretariat of the Communist Part of Czechoslovakia and began a series of reforms that allowed, most significantly, greater autonomy and freedom of speech. In June of that year, journalist, Ludvik Vaculik, published a paper entitled “The Two Thousand Words“, which was a manifesto protesting the increasingly hard-line elements in the government, and calling for increased reforms and openness. Caslavska, who was not one to shy away from controversy, signed the manifesto, along with hundreds of thousands of others.

vera-caslavska_mexico-city_protesting
Vera Caslavska turning her head down and away during the Soviet national anthem, with Soviet co-gold medalist Larisa Petrik standing alongside.

In August of 1968, Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, ordered 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks into Czechoslovakia to squash the so-called Prague Spring. As a result of the invasion, Caslavska lost access to her training facilities just weeks prior to the beginning of the Mexico City Olympics. Quite famously, Caslavska trained in the forests of Moravia, improvising with potato sacks for weights and logs for beams.

In other words, Caslavaska likely took the Soviet invasion personally. When she returned to Prague with her treasure trove of medals garnered in Mexico, she did not place them in her trophy case. Instead, Caslavska handed her four gold medals to the Czech leaders of the Prague Spring after they had been deposed by the Soviet Union. This act was not rewarded by the authorities, as Caslavaska immediately fell under a travel ban, and was denied coaching positions. As the obit in The Telegraph summed up, her international career was ended.

It took another six years before Caslavska was finally allowed to work as a gymnastics coach in Czechoslovakia. And when the wall in Berlin fell in 1989, those in power began to look upon Caslavska in a different light. The then new president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, hired Caslavska as an advisor. She was then elected president of the Czech Olympic Committee. UNESCO contributed to the Caslavska revival by recognizing her life’s work in gymnastics with the Pierre de Coubertin International Fair Play Trophy in 1989. Her government honored her with the Czech Republic’s Medal of Merit in 1995. And in 1998, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

When Vera Caslavska passed away on August 30, 2016, the world remembered a woman of beauty, a gymnast extraordinaire who blended athleticism and balletic grace, and an activist who did not shy from her convictions.

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The Great Czech Gymnast Vera Caslavska Passes Away Part 1: The Gymnast

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Vera Casalavska, from the book, Tokyo Olympics Special Issue_Kokusai Johosha

It was 2011, at the gymnastics World Championships in Tokyo, and a special luncheon was held at the Olympic Stadium. Abie Grossfeld, an assistant coach of the US men’s gymnastics team in 1964, was at that luncheon, and remembers when Vera Caslavska entered the room. “All stood up and gave her a standing ovation,” he wrote. “That’s the respect we all gave her.”

Caslavska was the Queen of gymnastics in the 1960s, taking the reins from legendary Russian gymnast, Larisa Latynina. After Latynina won consecutive golds in the All-Arounds in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960, Caslavska did the same in Tokyo in 1964 and then in Mexico City in 1968. In addition to a team silver medal in Rome, Caslavska (pronounced cha-SLAF-ska), won a total of 11 medals in her Olympic career, including 7 gold medals. She is the most decorated Olympian from Czechoslovakia, before or after her country broke apart.

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Takashi Ono, Vera Caslavska, Abie Grossfeld, and Yuri Titov at the World Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, 2011; from Abie Grossfeld

She was also immensely popular due to her beauty queen looks. As a former coach described her, she was “like someone you’d take to the high school prom. She had a big bouffant hairstyle and a very womanly body.” Right after the Olympic Games in Mexico City, she married fellow Czech Josef Odlozil in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Mexico City, an event that “was mobbed by thousands of supporters,” cementing her hold on the public imagination.

On August 30, 2016, Vera Caslavska of Prague, passed away. She was 74 years old.

In the 1960s, as gymnasts began blending athleticism and balleticism, Caslavska seemed to find the right balance. Muriel Grossfeld, a member of the US women’s gymnastics team, and she told me that in the 1960s, judges were trying to find the right standard to judge gymnasts. “Until we got the new scoring system, scoring was like a pendulum. One time the more artistic gymnast won, but maybe the next time the more athletic gymnast won. I think Caslavaska blended both very well.”

Why was she so good? As Muriel Grossfeld told me, “she worked hard. She was a perfectionist. Her work ethic was enormous. I remember her working on routine after routine on the beam. 40 times a day!” Makoto Sakamoto was also a member of the US men’s gymnastics team in the 1960s and agreed with Muriel Grossfeld’s assessment. Sakamoto was at a dual US-Czech gymnastics meet in the winter of 1964 where he saw Caslavska compete. He told me he admired the professionalism and preparation of Caslavska.

“I was sixteen and she was about 21 years old.  We both won the all-around  title, but what I remember most about her was the way she prepared for her performances.  Instead of having her coach carry the heavy vaulting board, she did it by herself. When the uneven bar snapped in half  during one of her performances, she just waited patiently until a replacement bar could be installed.  Then she performed her routine without any mistakes.”

Sakamoto also remembers when Caslavska dominated at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He had been training in Tokyo and was actually in the hospital recovering from a ruptured achilles tendon when he “witnessed on black and white television one of the most moving artistic performances” he had ever experienced: Caslavska’s floor exercise routine at the Mexico City Games, performed to the “magic rhythm of the Mexican Hat Dance.” Muriel Grossfeld, who was in Mexico City agreed, telling me “that was a very smart song selection, was fun and built a lot of enthusiasm in the arena.”

She was so dominant in the 1960s that Caslavska is still the only gymnast, male or female to have won gold in every individual artistic gymnastic discipline. As 1984 Olympic gold medalist, Bart Connor, recently said about Caslavska, “She was one of the most dominant gymnasts of her time, balanced in all the events and completely comparable to someone like Simone Biles.”

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What if All Russian Athletes Had been Banned from the Rio Olympics? Let’s Speculate

Rio Medals Table sans Russia

A little less than two weeks prior to the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics, the IOC made a fateful decision. A report from the World Anti-Doping Agency recommended that all Russian athletes be banned from international competition, including the Olympic Summer Games. The IOC, which had the final say, chose to defer judgment on eligibility for Olympic participation to the various international sports federations. While the international track and field organization, IAAF, had decided much earlier to ban the entire Russian track and field team, many other federations chose to allow the Russians to compete. In the end, 278 Russians were cleared, while 111 were ruled ineligible.

At the end of the Olympic Summer Games on August 21, Russia had tallied the fourth highest number of gold medals (19) and total medals (56), behind the USA, China and Great Britain. Russia finished ahead of Germany, France and Japan.

But what would have happened if all Russian athletes were banned from the Rio Games as WADA had recommended?

  1. Would the medal tables have changed significantly?
  2. Would any individual or team have won for their country a medal in a specific category for the first time?
  3. Would any nation have won its first medal of any kind, ever?

Would the medal tables have changed significantly? The answer to the first question is no. if the Russians had to give back all of their 56 medals, around 30 nations would be getting additional medals. America could have added two medals but they were already 50 medals ahead of China. China was actually impacted the most by Russia’s presence, as they could have had as many as another 7 bronze medals without the Russians in the mix. But that would still have left them far behind the US in the overall medal race.

Italy may have felt the pain considerably. Like the Chinese, they lost out potentially on as many as 7 bronze medals in a wide variety of sporting areas. Azerbaijan potentially lost out on 5 bronze medals, if not for the Russians.

Of course, these are guestimates I’ve made based on what individuals or teams came in fourth. Complicating matters, in sports like judo or wrestling or boxing you have at least two people each tied for third and fourth. In the case of the men’s lightweight boxing tournament, there were four people who finished just below one of the bronze medalists, a Russian. Who knows who would have actually gotten the bronze without Vitaly Dunaytsev in Rio?

Dipa Karmaker
India’s first Olympic gymnast, Dipa Karmaker
Would any nation have won its first medal in a specific category? The answer to the second question is yes. Dipa Karmaker is a female gymnast from India, and her score of 15.966 in the individual vault competition left her 0.15 points behind Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland. If silver medalist, Maria Paseka of Russia, had her medal revoked, Steingruber, Switzerland’s first gymnast to win a medal of any kind, would be awarded a silver medal. Her bronze medal would go to Karmaker, who is the first ever Indian to compete as a gymnast in the Olympics, and could possibly have been the first to win a gymnastics medal if the Russians were not allowed to compete.

Would any nation have won its first medal of any kind, ever? The answer to the third question is yes: two countries could have finally broken the high-performance glass ceiling with a bronze medal.

If not for Russia, Cameroon could have taken home a bronze in women’s freestyle wrestling (75kg). Annabelle Ali, Cameroon’s flag bearer in the 2012 Games, tied with Vasilisa Marzaliuk of Belarus one notch below the Russian Ekaterina Bukina.

Additionally, Mauritius could have experienced its first medal. Kennedy St Pierre was one of four heavyweight boxers to place fifth at Rio. If Evgeny Tishchenko were not in Rio, a favored boxer would have been out of the competition. Who knows who would have beaten whom? Out of 8 quarterfinalists, four get medals, so St Pierre’s chances would have increased significantly if the Russian was not in the ring. Yes, you can say that for the other competitors, but for Mauritius, it would have been party time if St Pierre brought home the bronze.

Kennedy St-Pierre
Mauritius’ Kennedy St-Pierre beat Algeria’s Chouaib Bouloudinats
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Ancient Michael Phelps Pushing the Age Barrier: Who Said Youth Has to be Wasted on the Young

Michael Phelps
The incredible Michael Phelps

Gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, representing Uzbekistan, competed in her seventh Olympics in Rio at the age of 41.

American cyclist, Kristin Armstrong, won a gold medal in the individual road time trial in Rio, the third consecutive Olympics she has done so, at the age of 42.

Equestrian Phillip Dutton won a bronze medal in individual eventing for America at the age of 52.

Relative to Chusovitina, Armstrong and Dutton, swimmer Michael Phelps is a spring chicken. But at the age of 31, Phelps’ phenomenal Olympic career, particularly based on his results in Rio, is most definitely an outlier vis-a-vis his rivals and rival-wannabes. According to The Washington Post, “over the past 10 Summer Games, the oldest athlete to swim in the finals for the same events in which Phelps is scheduled to compete has been 29 years old, with the average age just under 22 years old. And, not surprisingly, times get slower as an athlete ages.” (Yes, Anthony Ervin winning gold in the 50-meter freestyle at the age of 35 is an even greater outlier.)

Michael Phelp's Aging Curve Compared_Washington Post

Role models are so important to aspiring athletes. And it’s not just adolescents and teenagers whose passions are ignited by their heroes. It’s Gen X. It’s even the Baby Boomers. They see Chusovitina and Phelps as trailblazers for those of us in our 30s, 40s and 50s, whose daily lives are filled with marketing meetings, children’s soccer matches, evening social gatherings, and attempts to overcome sleep deprivation on the weekends.

More and more commonly, men and women past their “prime” are making the time and taking the challenge to up their game in high performance athletics. The “Olympics” for athletes of age groups from 35 to over the century mark is the World Masters Games. The number of participants since 1985 has grown from over 8,000 to close to 30,000 in 2009, which was more than twice the number of athletes who took part in the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

Oksana Chusovitina in Rio

As the nations of the industrialized world see their populace age rapidly, the people with the most money and influence are the aged demographics. Clearly, their interest in staying healthy and happy grows as they collectively age. As the human body’s production of hormones that enhance the benefits of physical exertion diminish from the age or 35, we can feel very clearly our strength diminishing over time. But considerable research and thought is going into how to increase flexibility, strength and staying power the older you get.

And the research tells us that exercise, low intensity or high, done on a consistent basis, will yield positive results for practically everybody. But the fact of the matter is, our busy lives demotivate so many of us from making that daily effort. This personal coach explains that making the effort is just a matter of making a decision.

The hard part about this for maturing athletes is that job and family responsibilities may make getting to bed early difficult. You need to make a choice as to the type of life you want to lead. If you’ve made the decision that you want to live a healthy, fit life, then going to bed early is part of it. That will likely mean the end of midweek social events, skipping TV after dinner, and strict adherence to stopping work after 8:00pm.

But to get to competitive levels of athletic performance, no matter your age, you need to dream. Photojournalist, Susana Girón, has followed these silver athletes taking their pictures, and concluded that age is not an issue if you have that burning passion for excellence.­

Sport in the elderly is not simply an issue of health. It is said that once you become older, you stop dreaming and become less passionate about things. The bodies of these athletes might dwindle with each year, but the passion with which they live and face the events remains stronger than ever, especially as they become aware that every championship might be their last. Living with passion means to remain forever young.

Phillip Dutton in Rio
Phillip Dutton

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The Trials of Gabby Douglas: Fighting Faux Patriotism with the Better Nature of Our Angels

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Gymnast Gabby Douglas in Rio.

The Twitterverse can be very petty.

After the US women’s team dominated the team gymnastics competition and won gold at the Rio Olympics, gymnast Gabby Douglas got hit by a social media storm. Why? Because she did not have her hand over her heart during the medal ceremony.

One of the uglier images that made the rounds was an image of two photos placed in contrast to each other: one of the US women’s gymnastics team and the other of the US 4×100 men’s freestyle swim team. The top caption was “Understand the difference”. Under a picture of the swim team, in which Ryan Held is wiping tears from his eyes, are the words “took hand off of heart momentarily to hide tears of pride, joy, and accomplishment.” Underneath the picture of the US women’s gymnastics team, which shows Gabby Douglas with her hands at her side, are the words “blatant disrespect”.

Douglas is an American star of the 2012 London Olympics, a member of arguably the hardest working gymnastics team in history, who has spent countless days and hours in practice and pain to help bring golden glory to the US again in Rio. Here she was, being ripped apart online because she did not have her hand on heart.

The onslaught was so swift and vicious, Douglas felt compelled to apologize:

In response to a few tweets I saw tonight, I always stand at attention out of respect for our country whenever the national anthem is played. I never meant any disrespect and apologize if I offended anyone. I’m so overwhelmed at what our team accomplished today and overjoyed that we were able to bring home another gold for our country!

Douglas had no reason to apologize. Fortunately, the better angels of the Twitterverse nature agreed, and came to Douglas’ defense.

David Wottle on Winners Podium
David Wottle at the Muinch Games in 1972, Munich, Germany  Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

But we’ve seen this movie before.

  • In 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos were expelled from the Olympic Games after their respective first and third-place finishes in the 200-meter finals because they lowered their heads and raised their fists in protest of the state of Blacks in America.
  • In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, Dave Wottle won the 800-meter finals in dramatic fashion. At the awards ceremony, he stood at attention, his hand on heart and his trademark white golf cap on head during the playing of the American national anthem. Well, tongues wagged, and the press kept asking Wottle if he was protesting something. Wottle replied very sheepishly that he simply forgot he was wearing it. Wottle is lucky that the Internet was not a factor our lives yet.
  • And for decades, the simple act of carrying the flag in the opening ceremony was a matter of consternation for Americans. Perhaps it’s the fact that America was born out of war of independence from a King in Europe. But it became customary for the flag bearer leading the American team in an Olympic opening ceremony would not dip their flag to the host country’s leader as sign of respect. While Americans dipped and not dipped over the decades, the USOC then decided in 1936 after the Berlin Games to make it policy for the US flag bearer not to dip.

In 1964, during the Tokyo Olympic Games, then head of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, went as far as to recommend that the medal ceremony be dropped from the Olympics. According to a AP report, Brundage said at a press conference that “he doesn’t want national flags raised and anthems played after medal performances in the various sports because they only help to generate extreme nationalism.”

Brundage hopes to eliminate olympics victory ceremony
October 24, 1964 AP

Americans can have thin skins. Raw interpretations of what acts, what behaviors, what words are viewed as patriotic are openly voiced at the water cooler, in the press, and of course in the 21st century, most flamboyantly on the internet. This is true in sports competitions between nations as it is true in the political discourse of the US presidential campaign.

Perhaps it’s fruitless to say that calmer heads should prevail, other cheeks should be turned. But for what it’s worth, President Abraham Lincoln said it best. America’s 16th president presided over one of the most politically tumultuous periods in American history, and in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, he addressed a country on the verge of civil war. The quote below are the most famous from that address, and resonate today:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln

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Rio’s Golden Favorites: Simone Biles in Women’s Gymnastics

She was a six-year-old when she walked into a placed called Bannon’s Gymnastix in Houston, Texas. Simone Biles was there on a day-care field trip, watching other gymnasts, mimicking their moves, apparently so well that one of the coaches took down her name. The parents were contacted and Biles fate was sealed.

Today, the Columbus, Ohio native is not only the very best female gymnast in the world right now. Biles, who is the first woman to win three consecutive all-around world championships and the recipient of the most gold medals (10) in the history of world championship competition, is considered by some the best ever.

Simone Biles
Simone Biles at the 2015 P&G Gymnastics Championships where she won her third consecutive.

 

High performance athletes are different from us mere mortals. In the Biles’ family, January 1 is not about non-committal new year’s resolutions. Goals are set. Concrete ones. Ones that you are held accountable for. Here’s Buzzfeed’s Dvora Meyers explaining what Simone’s mother, Nellie, told her:

Nellie told me that her daughter had tried to delay their goal-setting talk that day. “She just avoided me like the plague,” she said. But Biles couldn’t avoid her mother, just as she could no longer avoid questions about the Olympics as she had in previous years. That morning in January, I watched Aimee Boorman, Biles’ longtime coach, write out the 2016 competition schedule on a large, laminated calendar to be hung on the gym walls: the American Cup, Classics, national championships, the Olympic trials, and a whole month blocked out for training camps and then the games. Everything was oriented toward Rio — and all eyes were on Biles.

Nellie is not actually Simone’s mother, she is her biological grandmother who, along with her husband Ron, took Simone in after Simone’s biological mother struggled with substance abuse. Clearly, the grandparents changed Simone’s destiny.

Today, Biles is considered a game-changer, her power and speed never before seen in women’s gymanstics. As the Huffington Post gushed, “she has an immensely difficult tumbling pass named after her, a double back layout with a half twist. If you’re the first person to complete a new trick in competition, you get that trick named after you forever. This is the Biles.”

At Rio, Simone Biles is a sure thing to win gold in at least the all-arounds. The question, like with Kōhei Uchimura for the Japan mens’ team, can Biles lead the US women’s team, the current reigning Olympic champions, to gold. Golden glory awaits.

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Rio’s Golden Favorites: Kohei Uchimura in Men’s Gymnastics

Uchimura holds up six fingers

At the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, after the competition ended, Kōhei Uchimura beamed into the camera and raised one finger at a time, until he showed the world six fingers, one for six consecutive world championships since 2009. Actually, it’s seven if you include the 2012 London Olympics. In fact, he is the only gymnast, either male or female, who has ever won more than two world championships in a row.

Such consistent superiority at the highest levels of gymnastics competition have left experts with little more to say about “Superman” Uchimura, except that he is the greatest gymnast who has ever lived. As USA Today put it:

There have been gymnasts who have won more medals, and those who claimed more golds. But no one – no one – has dominated like Uchimura or done it for so long. That just doesn’t happen in gymnastics, where the difficulty of the skills and the constant repetition required to perfect them means the best gymnasts have all the staying power of a Kardashian marriage. It’s simply too grueling to stay at the very top for more than one Olympic cycle.

Uchimura is amazing because he doesn’t believe he has to show he can make the most difficult maneuvers, which he probably could do. But his goal is perfection, and the beauty that perfection can reflect. Here is a wonderful interview of Uchimura conducted by the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG), in which he says the following:

Beauty of movement is my goal. My father used to say that a hundred imperfect movements cannot match a single beautiful one, and this is something I have always kept in my mind. I could perform more difficult skills, but if I did I would have problems. For instance, I don’t have the energy that I did, and I can’t keep my feet taut, so I always aim for a balance between technical difficulty and execution in my routines. This is where the beauty of gymnastics comes in.

At the ripe age of 27, the Kita Kyushu native believes he is peaking at the right time for Rio, and that this is the last chance for him to maintain this level for all-around competitions, although he does leave open the possibility, as he says in the FIG interview, of competing for Japan at home in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Rio Olympics will probably be the last when I am at the top of my game. I want to be faultless. As the 2020 Olympics are being held in Japan, I want to carry on until then. [But] the risk of injury increases with age. One can carry on competing on the horizontal [high] bar for longer than the other apparatus. My technique is good, and I’m capable of scoring highly, so I would choose the horizontal bar.

The question is, can he lead the Japan team to its first overall gold championships since 2004, and perhaps spark another golden age of Japan’s men’s gymnastics when they won gold at six consecutive Olympics from 1960 to 1976. Uchimura will have London Olympic teammate, Koji Yamamoto, Ryohei Kato and Yusuke Tanaka, as well as a 19-year-old talent, Kenzo Shirai, who is a world champion in the floor exercise.

But there is no question: Unless Uchimura has an injury in Rio, there is very little stopping Superman from repeating as Overall Champion at the Olympics this summer.

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Thank You Mom’s “Strong”: P&G’s Powerful (and Dark) Two-Minute Tribute to Mothers

As Olympians finalize their preparations for the 2016 Rio Olympics, parents of Olympians too are gearing up for the emotional roller coaster. At times, mothers can have an outsized impact on the development of their children – think Duke Ellington, Richard Nixon or Norman Bates.

Thank you Mom Strong 1

In homage to one of their biggest customer segments, global fast-moving consumer goods company, P&G, has continued its “Thank You Mom” campaign, launching one of its most talked-about commercials two months ago. Hollywood director, Jeff Nichols, was hired to create its flagship commercial as a run-up to the Games. And while he took an uncharacteristically dark turn in theme, the commercial proved to be a viral hit.

Thank you Mom Strong 2

The 2-minute commercial, Strong, tells the stories of athletes whose mothers protected them, sheltered them, comforted them during difficult or even dangerous times: a tornado, a car crash, air turbulence, bullying.

Yes, there are violins that help pull at your heartstrings.

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Ultraman’s Origin Story: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics Men’s Gymnastics Team

Eiji Tsbarya and his Ultraman creations
Eiji Tsuburaya and his Ultraman creations
Ultraman is 50 years old! He’s still battling kaiju! And he hasn’t aged a bit.

It was July 17, 1966 when the first episode of Ultraman aired on Japanese televisions. Since then, Ultraman has been re-packaged in close to 40 different television series or movies, and is an internationally recognized phenomenon, on the same level as Pokemon, Hello Kitty and Doraemon.

Ultraman is the brainchild of Eiji Tsuburaya, who at the time was producing a newly launched series called “Ultra-Q“, what might be called a Japanese version of the television series Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, which were popular in the early 1960s.

Ultraman baltan seijin

Ultra-Q was not unpopular, but the broadcaster, Tokyo Broadcasting System did some research and discovered that the kids loved the episodes with all of the giant monsters (known in Japanese as “kaijyu“). This was particularly true thanks to the popularity of the Godzilla movies. As it turned out, Tsuburaya understood that. After all, he was the co-creator of the Godzilla movies. So after the first season of Ultra-Q ended, Tsuburaya decided to devote his series to kaiju, by introducing a character that would forever defend the world from the bad ones.

In one of those quick feats of legerdemain, Tsuburaya changed the name of his series from Ultra-Q to Ultraman. Broadcast in color, Ultraman burst on to the scene, and thus was born a cultural icon that all Japanese in their 40s, 50s and 60s can remember with nostalgic bliss.

But where did Tsuburaya get the term “ultra” from? That takes us back a couple of more years to 1964 and the Tokyo Olympics. Japan had just begun its run of men’s gymnastics dominance, by winning the team gold at the 1960 Rome Summer Games. They were expected to do well on their home turf in 1964, but they knew they would have tough competition, particularly with the Soviet Union. In an interview of the Helsinki Olympics medalist and member of a committee dedicated to strengthening gymnastics in Japan, Tadao Uesako, the Japanese newspaper, Daily Sports, revealed Japan’s gymnastics strategy.

Ohno Hayata Mitsukuri Endo Yamashita
Men’s gold medal gymnastics team from Japan: Takashi Ohno, Takuji Hayata, Haruhiro Yamashita, Takashi Mitsukuri, Yukio Endo, from the book Tokyo Olympiad 1964, Kyodo News Service
In 1964, international scoring for gymnastics worked on a three-level scale of A, B and C, where level C was considered the highest level of difficulty for a particular discipline or routine. It was Uesako’s view that Japan’s gymnasts were aspiring to levels beyond C, or as he called it, “Ultra-C“. And from that article, another foreign word (or in this case, prefix) entered the Japanese lexicon.

So there you have it – Tsuburaya made the leap from “Ultra-C” to “Ultra-Q”, thanks to the Japanese men’s gymnastics squad that took gold, ultimately sticking the landing on Ultraman.

Happy Birthday Ultraman!

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Gymnast George Eyser: The One-Legged Olympic Champion

George Eyeser leg
George Eyser’s left leg.

He won six medals in one day, including three gold and two silver medals, at the Third Olympiad, the 1904 St Louis Olympics.

This despite his competitors having a leg up on him. Literally.

George Eyser portraitThe St Louis Summer Games was the first time medals had been awarded to the top three finishers of an event, and it was also the first time that an athlete had performed with a leg prosthesis. American, George Eyser, had lost his left leg in an accident involving a train, so he ambulated and competed using a wooden leg.

At the top of the page is a picture of the prosthesis, which I admit, looks pretty good for early 20th century medical technology. Even so, try to imagine Eyser running fast enough or jump high enough on that wooden leg. Try to imagine him sticking a dismount off of the horizontal bar. I can’t. And yet, he won gold in the parallel bars, long horse vault, as well as the 25-foot rope climbing events, took silver in the pommel horse, and bronze in the horizontal bar. At the least the last activity mentioned didn’t require so much from the legs.

natalie du toit
Natalie du Toit

It wasn’t until 2008 when the second athlete with a prosthesis for a leg performed in the Olympics – Natalie du Toit, a swimmer from South Africa who competed in the 10 kilometer swimming marathon. More famously another South African, double-amputee Oscar PistoriusOscar Pistorius, ran in the 400-meter race at the 2012 London Olympics on carbon-fiber prosthetics. Those j-shaped modern engineering miracles and Pistorius’ athletic ability earned the runner the very cool nickname, Blade Runner, once upon a time.

It is Eyser alone, of this incredible trio of athletes, who stands firmly as Olympic champion.

Oscar Pistorius in London
Oscar Pistorius
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