A Short History of Women's Artistic Gymnastics

Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) has changed substantially since its first Olympic appearance, in apparatus, format and scoring alike.

A team-only debut (1928)

WAG entered the Olympic programme at the 1928 Amsterdam Games as a team event only — the first Olympics to include women’s gymnastics at all. The Netherlands won, ahead of Italy, with Great Britain’s women taking bronze. See British gymnastics at the Olympics.

The modern programme arrives (1952)

Individual competition came much later. At the 1952 Helsinki Games, women competed for the first time for an individual all-around title and in separate finals on vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise — the four apparatus still used today. The same Games, and the next in 1956, also included a team event with portable apparatus, in which gymnasts performed group routines with hand apparatus; it was then dropped from the Olympic programme.

The television era (1970s)

The sport’s profile changed in the 1970s. At Munich 1972, the Soviet Union’s Olga Korbut won three gold medals, and pictures of her — in tears after a mistake on bars, then triumphant in the apparatus finals — reached a worldwide television audience. Four years later at Montreal, Romania’s Nadia Comăneci received the first perfect 10 in Olympic history, on uneven bars, and went on to score seven. Skills named after both still appear in today’s Code of Points: the Korbut vault, and the Comăneci salto and dismount on bars.

The end of the perfect 10 (2006)

For most of WAG’s history, routines were marked out of a maximum of 10.0. In 2006, after a judging controversy at the Athens 2004 Olympics, the FIG replaced that system with separate, open-ended difficulty and execution scores — see from the perfect 10 to open-ended scoring. The change rewards gymnasts who attempt harder skills, and the most decorated gymnast of the period that followed, Simone Biles, has five skills named after her.

WAG today

Under the 2025–2028 WAG Code of Points:

• women compete on four apparatus, in the order vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor;
• beam and floor routines can last up to 90 seconds, and floor is performed to music;
• beam and floor are judged on artistry as well as execution — see artistry in floor and beam;
• each apparatus except vault has four composition requirements — see composition requirements.

Women must be at least 16 in the year of an Olympic Games to compete: for LA 2028, gymnasts must be born on or before 31 December 2012. For a British milestone in this story, see Beth Tweddle, Britain’s first female world champion.