Olga Korbut
| Olga Korbut | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| — Gymnast — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korbut c. 1972
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| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Full name | Olga Valentinovna Korbut | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | Sparrow from Minsk | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country represented |
 Soviet Union
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| Born |
16 May 1955 Hrodna, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union |
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| Height | 4 ft 11 in (150 cm) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 6 st (84 lb; 38 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Women's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Soviet Army Grodno | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eponymous skills | Korbut Flip | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retired | 1977 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Olga Valentinovna Korbut (born 16 May 1955) is a Belarusian former gymnast. Nicknamed the "Sparrow from Minsk", she won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympic Games, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team.
Korbut was born in Grodno. She started training at age 8, and entered a Belarusian sports school headed by coach Renald Knysh at age 9. There, Korbut's first trainer was Elena Volchetskaya, an Olympic gold medalist (1964), but she was moved to Knysh's group a year later. Initially he found her "lazy and capricious" but he also saw potential in her great talent, unusually supple spine, and charisma. With him, she learned a difficult backward somersault on the balance beam. She debuted this at a competition in the USSR in 1969. In the same year, Korbut completed a backflip-to-catch on the uneven bars; this was the first backward release move ever performed by a woman on bars.
She finished fifth at her first competition in the 1969 USSR championships, where she was allowed to compete as an underage 15-year-old. The next year, she won a gold medal in the vault. Due to illness and injury, she was unable to compete in many of the competitions before the 1972 Olympics.
At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Korbut's acrobatics and open high-level gymnastics brought her much fame. To this day, the back tuck and Korbut Flip are still very popular (2003 world beam champion Fan Ye performed both in her routine). This excellence in technical skills overthrew the sport's traditional emphasis on artistry.
During the Olympics, Korbut was one of the favourites for the all-around after her dynamic performance in the team competition; however, she missed her mount on bars three times and the title went to her teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva. Notwithstanding, Korbut won three gold medals for the balance beam, floor exercise and team. In one of the most controversial finishes of all time, she took a silver medal in the uneven bars. Korbut's first attempt at her uneven bars routine was marred by several mistakes which all but ended her chances of winning a gold medal in the all-around. The next day, Korbut repeated the same routine in the event finals, although this time successfully. After the boards displayed a score of 9.8, the audience began to whistle, jeer, stamp their feet, and shout vulgar remarks at the judges in disapproval, believing her score to be too low. This carried on for several minutes; however, the judges refused to change her score.
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Wikipedia