With the Olympic Games just a couple of days away, I can't help but wonder about the trailblazer gymnasts from the past, the ones that would stand for what they believed in, no matter the consequences. They opened the door for any gymnasts who were different (black, older, more muscular,...) to be able to compete in gymnastics.
This is my tribute to Vera Caslavska, the Czech Republic's two-time Olympic gold medalist who is still adored in the artistic gymnastics community, sadly, she passed away on August 30, 2016, funnily enough not too long after the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
Few people are aware that, in 1967, nine years before Nadia Comaneci achieved the feat at the Montreal Olympics, she was the first gymnast to get a perfect ten in an international competition at the European championships.
Caslavska won 22 international competition titles between 1959 and 1968. She has won four world titles in artistic gymnastics, eleven European titles, and seven gold medals from the Olympics. She is one of just two female gymnasts to have won the all-around gold medal at successive Olympic Games, the other being Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina.
Vera's most significant gymnastics accomplishments are:
1958 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships (her first international competition): 1 silver - team final
1959 European Championships: 1 gold - vault; 1 silver - balance beam
1960 Olympics - Rome: 1 silver - team final
1961 Europeans: 1 bronze - all around
1962 Worlds: 1 gold - vault; 1 silver - all around
1964 Olympics - Tokyo: 3 golds - all around, vault, balance beam; 1 silver - team final
1965 Europeans: 5 golds - all around, vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor
1966 Worlds: 3 golds - team final, all around, vault
1967 Europeans (she was the first gymnast to score a perfect 10, 9 years before Nadia Comaneci): 5 golds - all around, vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor
1968 Olympics - Mexico: 4 golds - all around, vault, uneven bars, floor; 2 silvers - team final, balance beam.
Vera was forced to rain in hazardous conditions in the wildernes 2 months prior to the 1968 Olympic Games, as she lost her training facilities due to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. She nevertheless manage to have an extremely successful competition at the 1968 Olympics despit this setback. She became quite well-known in Mexico thanks to the fact that she married in Mexico City as the games were in full swing and to the popular Mexcan music she used on her floor routine. Caslavska had publicly opposed the Soviet invasion of her country. At the end of the floor final, she tied for gold with Soviet gymnast Larisa Petrick, as they stepped on the podium and they played the Soviet anthem, she turned her head down and silently objeteced to playing homage to the nation that had invaded hers.
She was obligated to retire in 1968 due to her vocal opposition to the Soviet invasion, and she was regarded as persona non grata in her own nation until the Communist regime fell in 1989, at which point she was once more bestowed with the laurels and accolades she had so deservedly earned.