Olga Korbut Biography - Talent Shows Early, Raising The Bar In Gymnastics, A Worldwide Favorite, Athlete Turns Activist - CONTACT INFORMATION
cathy rigby brought american
1955-
Belarussian gymnast
Olga Korbut brought qualities to Olympic gymnastics that few had seen before. She brought innovation—her backwards flips from the balance beam and the uneven bars became a staple of the sport's repertoire. She brought youth—Korbut and her American peer Cathy Rigby were the standard-bearers of gymnastics' new breed of teenage prodigies. And she brought a smile—Korbut freely expressed the joy and pain behind her craft, countering the image of Soviet athletes as stoic and inaccessible. As Sports Illustrated writer Leigh Montville put it, "she was 85 pounds of pigtailed détente, flipping her way into the American consciousness."
CONTACT INFORMATION
Online: http://www.olgakorbut.com.
Additional Topics
Korbut was born in 1955 (some sources say 1956) in Grodno, on the Niemen River in the country of Belarussia, then part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Now called Belarus, the nation was a training ground for the Soviet gymnastics system, which had produced such stars as Yelena Volchetskaya, Larissa
Olga Korbut
Petrik, and Tamara Lazakovich. The youngest daughter of an…
The sight of the petite, pigtailed seventeen-year-old was duly noted by the audience, who were accustomed to not just more sober, but much older, Soviet gymnasts. (As recently as 1964, the gold medal winner from Russia was a 29-year-old mother.) In the past, gymnastics had been likened to a heightened form of ballet. By 1968, Cathy Rigby helped pioneer the athletic bent the sport would soon embrac…
For gymnastics' newest star, life would not be the same. She toured the United States and Europe, meeting everyone from the British Prime Minister to Mickey Mouse. In one notable encounter, Korbut met a stranger who greeted her by saying, "You're so tiny." "You're so big," she replied to President Richard Nixon. At the same time, Korbut felt the pre…
Montreal represented Korbut's farewell to competition; she returned to the Soviet Union, married in 1978, and gave birth to her son, Richard, a year later. But the world had not heard the last of Olga Korbut. In 1986, the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded. Some 180 miles away at her home in Minsk, Korbut could see the cloud of radiation. "But the government never even told us to …
Having survived the Communist regime and Chernobyl radiation, Olga Korbut moved to the United States to begin a new life. All would not go smoothly, however. In January 2002, Korbut was arrested, charged with shoplifting $19 worth of food from a Publix supermarket in Norcross, Georgia. The gymnast's representative, Kay Weatherford, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was a misunde…
Great Women in Sports. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1996. Attner, Paul. Washington Post (March 18, 1973). Calkins, Laurel Brubaker. "10 Again." People (July 15, 1996). Golubev, Vladimir. Soviet Life (February, 1983). Hersch, Hank. "Beaming Again." Sports Illustrated Classic (fall, 1992). "Korbut Says Coach Forced Her to Have Sex." Globe and Mail (June 24, 1…
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