Word: retton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Like Retton, Peter Vidmar and Tim Daggett had a dream. As gymnastics teammates at UCLA, they always concluded their workouts with a fantasy. "We'd pretend it was the Olympics," Vidmar recalls. "We'd turn off the radio, and the gym would be all silent. We'd go to the high bar, and then we'd say, 'O.K., we have to hit both of our routines perfect in order to win the Olympic gold medal.' We always laughed, because it seemed so unrealistic. And all of a sudden, we found ourselves in that exact...
...Retton, by contrast, is a 4-ft. 9-in. study in power, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound and do a full-twisting layout double Tsukahara (a maneuver only a few men in the world can perform) while she is at it. On the vault, she earned a 10 with that trick, which calls for pouncing onto the vault, then pushing into the stratosphere with her arms and twisting 360° while doing a double somersault with her body perfectly straight...
Thanks to such razzle-dazzle, Retton led the field at the beginning of the all-around competition with a cumulative score of 39.525 points. Just behind her, with 39.375, was Rumania's leading gymnast, Ecaterina Szabo, 17, a smoothly solid performer who rarely makes mistakes. Tied for third place were another Rumanian, Laura Cutina, 16, and McNamara, with...
...only performed risky maneuvers flawlessly but managed to make her narrow ground seem like a stage for the Bolshoi Ballet. At one point she rolled off four consecutive backward handsprings, one more than the beam seems capable of containing and two more than any other gymnast tried. Retton's performance on the uneven bars, on the other hand, was, for her, mediocre. The judges gave her a 9.85, and the score was tied...
...second series, Retton gave a creditable performance on the beam, but she had one serious loss of balance after landing a back somersault. The judges marked it, by the book, for a 9.80. Szabo moved to the floor exercise. There again, she was as athletic as she was balletic, alternating stunning twists and turns with lyrical dance movements. Her 9.95 put her in the lead by .15 with only two events remaining...