Olga Korbut

Olga Korbut’s 1972 Olympic performances are widely credited with a step change in gymnastics’ international visibility, thanks in large part to early live television coverage.

Significance

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Korbut won team gold with the Soviet Union, plus individual gold on balance beam and floor exercise and a silver on uneven bars — after an error-marred bars performance in the all-around had earlier put her out of medal contention there. She returned at the 1976 Montreal Olympics to win a second team gold, plus an individual silver on balance beam. Korbut is commonly cited as a turning point in how the sport was perceived by a global television audience, combining emotional, expressive performance with elements considered daring for the era.

Background

Korbut was born in 1955 in Grodno (now Hrodna, Belarus), then part of the Soviet Union, and trained at the Soviet Army club in Grodno under coach Renald Knysh. She competed in women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG), which is contested on four apparatus: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise.

Munich 1972: losing the all-around, winning the audience

Korbut was in contention in the all-around final until her uneven bars routine, where she made several mistakes from the mount onwards. She finished seventh, and the title went to her teammate Lyudmila Tourischeva. Pictures of Korbut in tears after that routine were seen around the world, and are a large part of why her story became so widely known.

She recovered in the apparatus finals. She won gold on balance beam and floor exercise and silver on uneven bars, where her score of 9.8 led to several minutes of protest from the crowd; the judges did not change it. Combined with team gold, that gave her four medals from one Games, and she went on to receive the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year award for 1972.

What she was known for

Korbut’s routines are remembered for acrobatic elements that were considered daring for the era. On uneven bars she was the first gymnast to perform, in international competition, a backward salto from a standing position on the high bar, catching the same bar again — the move that became known as the “Korbut flip”. Standing on the bars is no longer allowed, and the element is not in the current 2025–2028 WAG Code of Points. She also performed a back salto on balance beam, but it is not credited to her by name.

Her name does remain in the Code of Points. The WAG vault table lists the Korbut: a handspring forwards with a full turn (360°) onto the table and a full turn off, valued at 3.60 points in the 2025–2028 WAG Code of Points (vault element 1.31). For how skills come to carry a gymnast’s name, see how gymnastics skills get named and handspring vaults.

Montreal 1976 and retirement

Between the two Olympics, Korbut won all-around silver at the 1973 European Championships, and at the 1974 World Championships in Varna she won gold with the Soviet team and on vault, plus silver in the all-around and on bars, beam and floor.

By Montreal 1976 a new generation had arrived, led by Romania’s Nadia Comăneci and Korbut’s teammate Nellie Kim. Korbut won a second team gold and a silver on balance beam, and finished fifth in the all-around. She retired from competition in 1977.

Legacy

In 1988 Korbut became the first inductee into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Her career sits at the start of the modern televised era of the sport, alongside Comăneci’s; for the wider story of how WAG changed over that period, see the short history of women’s artistic gymnastics.