This six-minute video nicely illustrates the increasing complexity of the moves performed by female gymnasts. The same has certainly happened in the balance beam; it seems that fifty years ago the event consisted of just walking, squatting, turning, and doing little jumps.
Via Neatorama.
I saw an illustration of the dives done in the Olympics fifty or so years ago. It was amazing how much the sport has improved. Many of the dives in the illustration were landed feet first after one "flip".
ReplyDeleteWhat the rhythmic gymnasts can do with their bodies, especially their spines, is astonishing! They do those contortions while throwing and catching balls, ribbons and hoops, and doing it all with incredible precision and balletic grace. I was in awe!
DeleteThis is the first year that I saw them working in teams -- truly amazing!
Amazing!!! I was somewhat surprised that the coaches not only stood by during releases, but also during DISMOUNTS during the early years! I can understand it during releases like they still do, but during dismounts?
ReplyDeleteFor those who though tl:dw here is the winning Olympic vaults 56 years apart, in GIF format.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.basereality.com/proxy/1134/Olympic-vaults-compared.gif
Is there a special trick to get gifs to replay on a Mac? Mine play once and then can't be reloaded, even if I paste the link in a new window. Very frustrating when I open a dozen tabs and one of them turns out to be a gif and by the time I get to that tab I've missed the action.
DeleteThere's probably a better way, but on most webservers you can append any query to force an image to be reloaded, by adding a '?' and then 'something=something'
Deletee.g. http://www.basereality.com/proxy/1134/Olympic-vaults-compared.gif?lol=wut
If you're using firefox, it may be a setting was altered:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Animated_images
Ah... I got it to repeat by just adding a "?". Then when that wouldn't repeat again, I added another letter to make it "?f" and so on and so on.
DeleteI then tried following the mozillazine link instructions, but got a popup warning me that I might void my warranty (which I'm sure expired long ago). I'll defer that for now.
Thanks, Danack.
This article has some Shift-Refresh key-combos for Macs: http://lifehacker.com/5574852/shift%252Brefresh-is-like-the-restart-button-for-web-sites
DeleteThat's even easier. Thank you. I wonder if most people know this stuff or whether I should write a quick post about it to bring it above the fold.
DeleteI'd say it's about 99 % that don't know. You'd be amazed how many don't know ctrl+f, or how many think that putting a url into google's search field is the quickest way of getting there.
Delete(same poster as anonymous above)
Did the gymnasts have any long-term ill effects from landing pelvis-first on the lower bar? Just seems like ... not a great place to repeatedly bash your weight onto.
ReplyDeleteThere needs to be a film that shows how highly traumatic this is.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Mukhina