Gymnastics History

Trying to escape from one’s training environment is an almost universal experience in elite gymnastics. When Liu Xuan came down with mumps, her teammates envied her because the illness offered a rare break from ...

Published in 2012, Liu Xuan’s memoir Xuanmu offers a look back on the journey that shaped one of China’s most celebrated gymnasts. Written more than a decade after her retirement, it traces her path from a timid, sickly child in Changsha to Olympic champion, while also exploring the personal costs of that transformation.

The opening chapters focus on Liu’s ...

In the spring of 1980, Canada’s gymnasts were preparing for what many believed would be a breakthrough Olympic Games. The men’s and women’s teams had both qualified for Moscow, experienced veterans stood alongside rising young stars, and several athletes were realistic contenders for international success. Then Canada joined the American-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Th...

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, governments across the Western alliance were forced to decide whether to support the American-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Most Western European countries ultimately found ways to send their athletes to the Games, often under the Olympic flag rather than their national colors. West Germany was different. As on...

In Japan, athletes selected for the 1980 Moscow Olympics are sometimes described as maboroshi no orinpian—”phantom Olympians.” The phrase is remarkably apt. A phantom occupies a liminal space between presence and absence: real enough to leave traces, yet impossible to grasp; gone, yet somehow still there.

For years, thousands of people had organized their l...