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OLGA KORBUT
Official website: www.olgakorbut.com
Olga Valentinovna Korbut (born May 16, 1955 in Hrodna), also known as the "Sparrow from Minsk,: is a Belarusian,
Soviet-born gymnast who won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympics, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the
USSR team.
Korbut, who started training at age 8, entered a Belarusian sports school headed by coach Renald Knysh at age 11. Korbut's first trainer was
Elena Volchetskaya, an Olympian. She was moved to Knysh's group a year later. With him, she learned a difficult backward somersault on the
balance beam.
She ended fifth at her first competition in the 1969 USSR championships. 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 tournaments prior to the 1972 Olympics.
At the 1972 Olympics, her acrobatics and open display of emotion, in contrast to the stereotypically cold eastern bloc athlete, captivated
the Munich audiences, and there she became the first person ever to do a backward somersault on the balance beam. She also was the first to do
standing backward somersault on bars, and a back somersault to swingdown (Korbut Flip) on beam. Her bars move is no longer seen in high level
gymnastics but the tuck back 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 gracefulness.
During the Olympics, Korbut was one of the favorites 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, she ended up winning three gold medals — for the balance beam, floor exercise and team, and one silver medal in the
uneven bars. However, she is most famous for her uneven bars and balance beam routines. Her Olympic achievement earned her the ABC's
Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.
In 1973, she won the Russian and World Student (i.e., University) Games and a silver medal in the all-around at the European Championships.
The Soviet coaches and officials had designated Olga as the woman who could beat Romanian prodigy
Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Olympic Games at Montreal. But Olga was injured and her performances were
under-par. She was overshadowed not only by Comaneci but by her own teammate Nellie Kim. But she did
collect a team gold medal and an individual silver medal for the balance beam.
She graduated from the Grodno Pedagogical Institute in 1977 and retired from gymnastics competition thereafter. She married Leonid Bortkevich,
who was a member of a popular Belarusian folk band Pesniary. The couple had a son, Richard, in 1979. In 1991, she immigrated to the United
States. Korbut and Bortkevich divorced in 2000. She married Alex Voinich in 2002, and they divorced in 2007.
In 2002, Korbut was charged with shoplifting and investigated after $30,000 in counterfeit money was found in an abandoned house that she
once owned and whose last occupant was her son.
Korbut was a highly decorated athlete, with four Olympic gold medals to her credit. But it is not her results for which she is most
remembered. The media whirl that surrounded her after her Olympic debut in 1972 caused a surge of young girls to join their local gymnastic
clubs. A sport which had previously seldom been noticed now made headlines. She also contributed to a change in the whole direction of the
sport. Prior to 1972, the athletes were rather older and there was a greater focus on elegance than on acrobatics. In the decade after Korbut
first came to the world's attention, this completely changed.
In 1988 Korbut was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
For more information, visit her
profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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