Word: gymnast
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...last men's event in the World Gymnastics Championships, the finals in the individual competition on the high bar, and the Soviets' Alexander Tkachev went first. He was trailing Kurt Thomas, the finest male gymnast in U.S. history, by just .025 points. Leaping up to the bar, Tkachev spun through a series of dazzling maneuvers. He launched himself into a twisting flyaway somersault, swooped down, then grabbed the bar a split second before crashing to the floor. Finally, Tkachev arched his body high above the bar, twisted through another flying double somersault with two half-twists and landed...
...team, how ever, still lacks the depth to be sure of performing as well in Moscow. Says Coach Roger Counsil: "What we need are three more Bart Conners or three more Kurt Thomases." Thomas, 23, is in his prime as a gymnast. Now an assistant coach at Arizona State, he has honed his routines in international meets for five years. Conner, a senior at the University of Oklahoma, has begun to come into his own at 21. But the rest of the U.S. squad of six are still young and green...
...Coach Xia Dejun admitted that the gap had hurt his country's development program. Said he: "During the Cultural Revolution, many of the schools were closed, most of the spare-time sports academies were closed, and for five years there was no training for our gymnasts. Our men's team has one gymnast who is 30. He started gymnastics before the Gang of Four. The rest are very young, and they started after the troubles in China. But we have no one in the middle. So now we must do two years' training in a single year...
...this year's disaster-movie sweepstakes, the film to beat is The Concorde -Airport '79. That hilarious-some might say seminal-extravaganza boasted such passengers as Susan Blakely as an investigative reporter, Cicely Tyson as a heart-transplant courier and Andrea Marcovicci as a Soviet Olympic gymnast...
Among Eastern bloc teams, the Soviet Union showed its usual depth and set two women's world records. No new sports monolith rose from obscurity in the way East Germany did in 1972. But a tiny star may have been born. Natalia Shaposhnikova, 18, an 84-lb. Soviet gymnast, captured both the all-round competition and the fancy of onlookers; "Natasha" may well become the Olga Korbut...