Gymnastics Olympics

Artistic gymnastics — floor exercise, vault, parallel bars, horizontal bar, rings, pommel horse (men); floor, vault, uneven bars, balance beam (women) — is the most technically demanding Olympic sport, requiring extraordinary strength-to-weight ratio, flexibility, spatial awareness, and mental courage. Gymnasts typically begin training at 3-5 years old and peak at 14-18 for women, 18-26 for men. Nadia Comaneci (Romania) scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic history (1976 Montreal Olympics, uneven bars) at age 14 — the scoring system wasn't designed to display 10.0, showing '1.00' instead. Simone Biles (USA) is considered the greatest gymnast of all time — with 37 World and Olympic medals, she has named skills ('The Biles') for moves so dangerous that no other elite gymnast attempts them. Her decision to withdraw from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics final for mental health ('the twisties') reframed the conversation about athlete wellbeing.