1988 Summer Olympics
The 1988 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated from 17 September to 2 October 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. In the Seoul Games, 159 nations were represented by a total of 8,391 athletes: 6,197 men and 2,194 women. 237 events were held and 27,221 volunteers helped to prepare the Olympics. 11,331 media showed the Games all over the world. These were the last Olympic Games for the Soviet Union and East Germany, as both ceased to exist before the next Olympic Games; the Soviets utterly dominated the medal table, winning 132 total medals. No country came close to this result after 1988; the games were boycotted by its ally, Cuba. Ethiopia and the Seychelles did not respond to the invitations sent by the IOC. Nicaragua did not participate due to financial considerations; the participation of Madagascar had been expected, their team was expected at the opening ceremony of 160 nations. However, the country withdrew because of financial reasons.
Nonetheless, the much larger boycotts seen in the previous three Summer Olympics were avoided, resulting in the largest number of participating nations during the Cold War era. Seoul was chosen to host the Summer Games through a vote held on 30 September 1981, finishing ahead of the Japanese city of Nagoya. Below was the vote count that occurred at the 84th IOC Session and 11th Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden, West Germany. After the Olympics were awarded, Seoul received the opportunity to stage the 10th Asian Games in 1986, using them to test its preparation for the Olympics. In its final Olympics, the Soviet Union utterly dominated the medal table winning 55 gold and 132 total medals. No country came close to this result after 1988. Soviet Vladimir Artemov won four gold medals in gymnastics. Daniela Silivaş of Romania won three and equalled compatriot Nadia Comăneci's record of seven Perfect 10s in one Olympic Games. After having demolished the world record in the 100 m dash at the Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, U.
S. sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner set an Olympic record in the 100-metre dash and a still-standing world record in the 200-metre dash to capture gold medals in both events. To these medals, she added a gold in the 4×100 relay and a silver in the 4×400. Canadian Ben Johnson won the 100 m final with a new world record, but was disqualified after he tested positive for stanozolol. Johnson has since claimed. In the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Team All-Around Competition, the U. S. women's team was penalized with a deduction of five tenths of a point from their team score by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique after the compulsory round due to their Olympic team alternate Rhonda Faehn appearing on the podium for the uneven bars during the duration of Kelly Garrison-Steve's compulsory uneven bars routine, despite not competing, having been caught by the East German judge, Ellen Berger. The U. S. finished fourth after the completion of the optional rounds with a combined score of 390.575, three tenths of a point behind East Germany.
This still remains controversial in the sport of gymnastics, as the U. S. performed better than the East German team and they would have taken the bronze medal in the team competition had they not been penalized or had an inquiry accepted to receive the points back. Phoebe Mills won an individual bronze medal on the balance beam, shared with Romania's Gabriela Potorac, making history as the first medal won by a U. S. woman in artistic gymnastics at a attended games. The USSR won their final team gold medals in artistic gymnastics on both the men's and women's sides with scores of 593.350 and 395.475 respectively. The men's team was led by Vladimir Artemov. Lawrence Lemieux, a Canadian sailor in the Finn class, was in second place and poised to win a silver medal when he abandoned the race to save an injured competitor, he arrived in 21st place, but was recognized by the IOC with the Pierre de Coubertin medal honoring his bravery and sacrifice. U. S. diver Greg Louganis won back-to-back titles on both diving events despite hitting his head on the springboard in the third round and suffering a concussion.
Christa Luding-Rothenburger of East Germany became the first athlete to win Olympic medals at the Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics in the same year. She added a cycling silver to the speed skating gold she won earlier in the Winter Olympics of that year in Calgary. Anthony Nesty of Suriname won his country's first Olympic medal by winning the 100 m butterfly, scoring an upset victory over Matt Biondi by.01 of a second. Swimmer Kristin Otto of East Germany won six gold medals. Other multi-medalists in the pool were Janet Evans. Swedish fencer Kerstin Palm became the first woman to take part in seven Olympics. Swimmer Mel Stewart of the U. S. was the most anticipated to win the men's 200 m butterfly final but came in 5th. Mark Todd of New Zealand won his second consecutive individual gold medal in the three-day event in equestrian on Charisma, only the second time in eventing history that a gold medal has been won consecutively. Baseball and Taekwondo were demonstration sports; the opening ceremony featured a mass demonstration of taekwondo with hundreds of adults and children performing moves in unison.
This was the last time the U. S. was represented by a basketball tea
Věra Čáslavská
Věra Čáslavská was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast and Czech sports official. She won a total of 22 international titles between 1959 and 1968 including seven Olympic gold medals, four world titles and eleven European championships. Čáslavská is the most decorated Czech gymnast in history and is one of only two female gymnasts, along with Soviet Larisa Latynina, to win the all-around gold medal at two consecutive Olympics. In addition to her gymnastics success, Čáslavská was known for her outspoken support of the Czechoslovak democratization movement and her opposition to the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, she took this protest to the world stage by looking down and away while the Soviet national anthem was played during the medal ceremonies for the balance beam and floor exercise event finals. While Čáslavská's actions were applauded by her compatriots, they resulted in her becoming a persona non grata in the new regime, she was forced into retirement and for many years was denied the right to travel and attend sporting events.
Čáslavská's situation improved in the 1980s after the intervention of members of the International Olympic Committee, following the Velvet Revolution her status improved dramatically. During the 1990s she held several positions of honor, including a term as president of the Czech Olympic Committee. Born in Prague and a figure skater, Čáslavská debuted internationally in 1958 at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, winning a silver medal in the team event, her first international title came the following year at the European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships where she won gold on the vault and silver on the balance beam. She first participated in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games, winning a silver medal with the Czechoslovak team, won bronze in the all around event at the 1961 European Championships, she fought for the all-around title at home in the 1962 World Championships, held off only by Larisa Latynina, managed to win her first world title, in the vault. She did not compete at the 1963 European Championships in Paris.
Between 1964 and 1968 Čáslavská won 19 individual gold medals in major international competitions. She was at her peak at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, winning the overall title and taking gold medals in the balance beam and the vault, in addition to another silver medal in the team event. At the 1966 World Championships, Čáslavská defended her vault title, winning a team gold – breaking the Soviet monopoly in that event – and became all-around world champion. Čáslavská dominated the 1965 and 1967 European Championships, taking all five individual titles and scoring perfect scores of 10 in 1967. Prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Čáslavská lost her training facility due to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Instead, she used potato sacks as weights and logs as beams whilst training in the forests of Moravia, she was again dominant at the 1968 Summer Olympics. She defended her all-around title and won additional gold medals on the floor, uneven bars and vault, as well as two silvers, for the team competition and balance beam.
Her use of the "Jarabe tapatío" as the music for her floor routine and her subsequent marriage in the city made her immensely popular with the Mexican crowd. Čáslavská's wins at the 1968 Olympics were poignant because of the political turmoil in Czechoslovakia. She had publicly voiced her strong opposition to Soviet-style Communism and the Soviet invasion, had signed Ludvik Vaculík's protest manifesto "Two Thousand Words" in the spring of 1968. To avoid being arrested, she spent the weeks leading up to the Olympics hiding in the mountain town of Šumperk, was only granted permission to travel to Mexico City at the last minute. At the Olympics, where she once again faced Soviet opposition, Čáslavská continued to subtly voice her views. After she appeared to have won the gold medal on floor outright, the judging panel curiously upgraded the preliminary scores of Soviet Larisa Petrik, declared a tie for the gold instead. All of this occurred on the heels of another controversial judging decision that cost Čáslavská the gold on beam, instead awarding the title to Soviet rival Natalia Kuchinskaya.
Disheartened and angered by the politics that favored the USSR, she protested during both medal ceremonies by turning her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem. Čáslavská was revered by Czech people for her brave demonstration on the world's biggest stage, she was awarded Czechoslovakia's Sportsperson of the Year award in 1968. Her federation, was none too pleased. For her consistent support of the Czechoslovak democratization movement in 1968, during the purges which followed the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, she was deprived of the right to travel abroad and participate in public sport events both in Czechoslovakia and abroad. Čáslavská was forced into retirement, was considered a persona non grata for many years in her home country. Czechoslovak authorities refused to publish her autobiography, insisted that it be censored when it was released in Japan, she was granted leave to work as a coach in Mexico, but only when the Mexican government threatened to cease oil exports to Czechoslovakia.
In the late 1980s, following pressure from Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee, who had presented her with the Olympic Order, Čáslavská was allowed to work as a gymnastics coach and judge in her home country. After the fall of Communism, the Velvet Re
Artistic gymnastics
Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses, with less time for vaulting. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, which designs the code of points and regulates all aspects of international elite competition. Within individual countries, gymnastics is regulated by national federations, such as Gymnastics Canada, British Gymnastics, USA Gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is a popular spectator sport at many competitions, including the Summer Olympic Games; the gymnastic system was mentioned in works by ancient authors, such as Homer and Plato. It included many disciplines that would become separate sports, such as swimming, wrestling and riding, was used for military training. In its present form, gymnastics evolved in Bohemia and what is now at the beginning of the 19th century, the term "artistic gymnastics" was introduced at the same time to distinguish free styles from the ones used by the military.
The German educator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, known as the father of gymnastics, invented several apparatus, including the horizontal bar and parallel bars, which are used to this day. Two of the first gymnastics clubs were Sokols. In 1881, the FIG was founded, it remains the governing body of international gymnastics, it included only three countries and was called the European Gymnastics Federation until 1921, when the first non-European countries joined the federation and it was reorganized into its present form. Gymnastics was included in the program of the 1896 Summer Olympics, but women have been allowed to participate in the Olympics only since 1928; the World Championships, held since 1903, were open only to men until 1934. Since that time, two branches of artistic gymnastics have developed: women's artistic gymnastics and men's artistic gymnastics. Unlike men's and women's branches of many other sports, WAG and MAG differ in apparatus used at major competitions and in techniques. Women's gymnastics entered the Olympics as a team event in 1928 and was included in the 12th gymnastics world championships in 1950.
Individual women were recognized in the all-around as early as the tenth world championships in 1934. Two years after the full women's program was introduced at the 1950 World Championships, it was added to the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and the format has remained to this day; the earliest champions in women's gymnastics tended to be in their 20s, most had studied ballet for years before entering the sport. Larisa Latynina, the first great Soviet gymnast, won her first Olympic all-around medal at the age of 22 and her second at 26. Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia, who followed Latynina to become a two-time Olympic all-around champion, was 22 before she started winning gold medals. In the 1970s, the average age of Olympic gymnasts began to decrease. While it was not unheard-of for teenagers to compete in the 1960s—Ludmilla Tourischeva was 16 at her first Olympics in 1968—younger female gymnasts became the norm as the sport's difficulty increased. Smaller, lighter girls excelled in the more challenging acrobatic elements required by the redesigned Code of Points.
The 58th Congress of the FIG—held in July 1980, just before the Olympics—decided to raise the minimum age for senior international competition from 14 to 15. The change, which came into effect two years did not eliminate the problem. By the time of the 1992 Summer Olympics, elite competitors consisted exclusively of "pixies"—underweight, prepubertal teenagers—and concerns were raised about athletes' welfare; the FIG responded to this trend by raising the minimum age for international elite competition to 16 in 1997. This, combined with changes in the Code of Points and evolving popular opinion in the sport, led to the return of older gymnasts. While the average elite female gymnast is still in her middle to late teens and of below-average height and weight, it is common to see gymnasts competing well into their 20s. At the 2004 Olympics, both the second-place American team and the third-place Russians were captained by women in their mid-20s. At the 2008 Olympics, the silver medalist on vault, Oksana Chusovitina, was a 33-year-old mother.
She received another silver medal on vault at the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo, when she was 36. At the age of 41, Chusovitina competed at her 7th consecutive Olympics at the 2016 Olympics, a world record for gymnastics. Both male and female gymnasts are judged on all events for execution, degree of difficulty, overall presentation skills. Vault The vault is an event as well as the primary piece of equipment used in that event. Unlike most of the gymnastic events employing apparatuses, the vault is common to both men's and women's competition, with little difference between the two categories. A gymnast sprints down a runway, a maximum of 25 m in length, before leaping onto a springboard. Harnessing the energy of the spring, the gymnast directs his or her body hands-first towards the vault. Body position is maintained while "popping" the vaulting platform; the gymnast rotates his or her body so as to land in a standing position on the far side of the vault. In advanced gymnastics, multiple twists and somersaults may be added before landing.
Successful vaults depend on the speed of the run, the length of the hurdle, the power the gymnast generates from the legs and shoulder girdle, kinesthetic awareness
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Beijing
Beijing romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China, the world's third most populous city proper, most populous capital city. The city, located in northern China, is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of central government with 16 urban and rural districts. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast. Beijing is an important world capital and global power city, one of the world's leading centers for politics and business, education, culture and technology, architecture and diplomacy. A megacity, Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by urban population after Shanghai and is the nation's political and educational center, it is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions. It is a major hub for the national highway, expressway and high-speed rail networks.
The Beijing Capital International Airport has been the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic since 2010, and, as of 2016, the city's subway network is the busiest and second longest in the world. Combining both modern and traditional architecture, Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back three millennia; as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries, was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D. Encyclopædia Britannica notes that "few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural center of an area as immense as China." With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital.
The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, parks, tombs and gates. It has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites—the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal— all tourist locations. Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. Many of Beijing's 91 universities rank among the best in China, such as the Peking University and Tsinghua University. Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or completed construction of multiple skyscrapers. Beijing's Zhongguancun area is known as China's Silicon Valley and a center of innovation and technology entrepreneurship. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had numerous other names; the name Beijing, which means "Northern Capital", was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing. The English spelling is based on the pinyin romanization of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin.
An older English spelling, Peking, is the postal romanization of the same two characters as they are pronounced in Chinese dialects spoken in the southern port towns first visited by European traders and missionaries. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, prior to a phonetic shift in the northern dialects to the modern pronunciation. Although Peking is no longer the common name for the city, some of the city's older locations and facilities, such as Beijing Capital International Airport, with IATA Code PEK, Peking University, still use the former romanization; the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is "BJ"; the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the caves date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago.
Paleolithic Homo sapiens lived there more about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, located in downtown Beijing; the first walled city in Beijing was Jicheng, the capital city of the state of Ji and was built in 1045 BC. Within modern Beijing, Jicheng was located around the present Guang'anmen area in the south of Xicheng District; this settlement was conquered by the state of Yan and made its capital. After the First Emperor unified China, Jicheng became a prefectural capital for the region. During the Three Kingdoms period, it was held by Gongsun Zan and Yuan Shao before falling to the Wei Kingdom of Cao Cao; the AD 3rd-century Western Jin demoted the town, placing the prefectural seat in neighboring Zhuozhou. During the Sixteen Kingdoms period when northern China was conquered and divided by the Wu Hu, Jicheng was the capital of the Xianbei Former Yan Kingdom. After China was reunified during the Sui dynasty, Jicheng known as Zhuojun, became the northern terminus of the Grand Canal.
Under the Tang dynasty, Jicheng as Youzhou, served as a military frontier command center. During the An-Shi Rebellion and again amidst the turmoil of the late Tang, local military commanders founded their own shor
1986 Goodwill Games
The 1986 Goodwill Games was the inaugural edition of the international multi-sport event created by Ted Turner, held from 5 – 20 July 1986. The main stadium was the Central Lenin Stadium in Moscow, Soviet Union; the Games were a response to the Olympic boycotts of the period, which saw the United States refuse to attend the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the Soviet Union refusing to attend the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Soviet athletes dominated the competition, winning 241 medals overall; the United States finished second place, with 142 medals in total. A total of 3000 athletes from 79 nations took part in events in eighteen different sports; the Goodwill Games was the first time in ten years that elite athletes from Soviet Union and United States competed against each other in a major summer multi-sport event. In contrast to the selection methods of other major competitions, the Games was an invitation-only event; the event was broadcast over 129 hours on TBS in the United States.
The Games themselves were subject to political issues, as the USSR banned teams from Israel and South Korea from the competition. The organizers closed the city to non-Muscovites; the Goodwill Games, although commercial in nature, were not successful financially and Turner Broadcasting suffered millions of dollars of losses through its support of the event. A number of sporting world records were set over the course of the Games. In the athletics competition, Sergey Bubka broke the pole vault record with a mark of 6.01 m, Jackie Joyner-Kersee broke the heptathlon record with a score of 7148 points, while Ben Johnson defeated Carl Lewis in the 100 metres to win his first major international title. Vladimir Salnikov broke the 800 m freestyle world record in the swimming competition with a time of 7:50.64. In the cycling events, Michael Hübner and Erika Salumäe set world records in the men's and women's 200 m flying start race, respectively; the 1986 FIBA World Basketball Championship in Madrid was broadcast on Ted Turner's network and were thus classified as the official Goodwill Games event for the men's sport.
In the women's basketball competition, the United States team broke the Soviets' undefeated international run, which had grown to 152 victories. The 1986 Games saw the first international motorcycle polo, or motoball, competition. Official website
Ludmilla Tourischeva
Ludmilla Ivanovna Tourischeva, born October 7, 1952, is a former Russian gymnast and a nine-time Olympic medalist for the Soviet Union. Tourischeva began gymnastics in 1965, at age 13, began competing for the Soviet team in 1967. Coached by Vladislav Rastorotsky, she represented the Soviet Union at the 1968 Summer Olympics, just after her 16th birthday, she placed 24th in the all-around. Two years Tourischeva became the leader of the Soviet team. From 1970 to 1974, she dominated every major international competition, winning the World Championships all-around gold in 1970 and 1974, the European Championships in 1971 and 1973, the World Cup in 1975, she was considered to embody the classic Soviet style: grace, impeccable form, strong technique. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Tourischeva won the all-around gold medal but was overshadowed by the sudden popularity of her younger compatriot Olga Korbut, she qualified for all four event finals, won a silver and a bronze. Tourischeva was one of the first female gymnasts to use two separate pieces of music for her floor routines at an international competition.
For the team competition, she used "March" from the film Circus by Isaak Dunaevsky, while for the all around, she used the music to the film Die Frau meiner Träume by Franz Grothe. At the 1975 European Championships, Tourischeva placed fourth in the all-around behind 13-year-old Nadia Comăneci of Romania, her own teammate Nellie Kim and Annelore zinke; this marked the first time in 5 years. After struggling with a back injury, Tourischeva competed in her third Olympics, the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, where she won her third team gold with the Soviet squad. In the all-around, she finished third behind Kim, she won silver medals on vault and floor exercise in the event finals, losing to Kim but overcoming Comăneci, bringing her total Olympic medal count to four gold, three silver, two bronze. Tourischeva was known for her calm demeanor in competition. In 1980, British journalist David Hunn wrote that she "never had the cheek of some of her rivals, but for serenity she was supreme"; this was famously illustrated during the 1975 World Cup at Wembley Stadium in London, when a broken hook holding support cables of the uneven bars caused the apparatus to fall apart and crash to the ground just as Tourischeva landed her dismount.
Saluting the judges, she walked off the podium without turning around to look at the remains of the apparatus. She went on to win all four event finals. Years she said of the incident that, at that moment, she had thought only one thing: she must complete her routine and "stick it". Rastorotsky, her coach, said, "Ljudmila would fight to death in any situation."She was known for her gracious manner. At the 1976 Olympics, she walked around the podium to congratulate champion Comăneci and shake her hand before accepting her own medal. Tourischeva is one of only two women, the other being Yelena Shushunova, who have won the "grand slam" of all-around titles: Olympics, World Championships, World Cup, European Championships, she is one of only two women to win four gold medals at a single World Championships. The other is Simone Biles of the United States, who won four in 2014, 2015, 2018. In 1977, Tourischeva married the sprinter Valeriy Borzov, a two-time Olympic champion in 1972, she was elected to the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation in 1981, has remained involved in gymnastics as a coach, an international judge, an official with the Ukrainian gymnastics federation.
One of her protégés was Lilia Podkopayeva of Ukraine, the all-around gold medalist at the 1996 Olympics. Tourischeva has received various honors for her gymnastics career, including the Women in Sport trophy from the International Olympic Committee. In 1998, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. List of multiple Olympic medalists List of top Olympic gymnastics medalists List of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships List of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union Ludmila TURICHEVA at the International Federation of Gymnastics Article from "Soviet Life" Full list of competitive results
Soviet Union
