Olga Korbut

Lore & Background

Korbut was born in Grodno to Valentin and Valentina Korbut. She started training at age 8 and entered a Belarusian sports school at age 9 under coach Renald Knysh, who initially found her 'lazy and capricious' but saw potential in her talent, supple spine, and charisma. She learned a difficult backward somersault on the balance beam and debuted it in 1969; that same year she completed a backflip-to-catch on the uneven bars, the first backward release move ever performed by a woman on bars. She finished fifth at her first USSR championships in 1969 and won a gold medal in the vault the next year, though illness and injury limited her competitions before the 1972 Olympics.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Korbut's acrobatics brought her fame. She missed her mount on bars three times in the all-around, losing the title to teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva, but won gold on balance beam, floor exercise, and team competitions. In the uneven bars event final, after a successful routine, the audience protested her score of 9.8, which she later called unfair judging. She also won a silver medal on bars. In 1973 she won the Russian and World Student Games and a silver medal at the European Championships. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, injured and overshadowed by Nadia Comăneci and teammate Nellie Kim, she earned a team gold and an individual silver on balance beam.

Korbut retired from competition in 1977 at age 22, graduated from the Grodno Pedagogical Institute, and became a teacher. She married Leonid Bortkevich, a member of the Belarusian folk band Pesniary, and had a son, Richard, in 1979. In 1988 she became the first gymnast inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 1991, concerned about the aftereffects of the Chernobyl disaster, she emigrated with her family to the United States, settling in New Jersey, then Georgia. She divorced in 2000, the same year she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. She later moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, to coach. In 1999 and again in 2018, she spoke out about sexual assault and rape by her coach Renald Knysh, which he denied; other gymnasts subsequently came forward with similar experiences.

Reader's Guide

Olga Korbut's significance lies in her transformative impact on gymnastics. Her performances at the 1972 Munich Olympics are widely credited with redefining the sport, shifting its focus from ballet and elegance to acrobatics, and elevating gymnastics from a niche activity to global popularity. At 4 ft 11 in and 82 pounds, she exemplified the trend toward smaller athletes in the sport. Her eponymous move, the Korbut flip—a backflip from a standing position on the high bar of the uneven bars—became iconic but was later banned from the Code of Points because standing on the bars was no longer allowed. She also has one eponymous vault listed in the Code of Points. Korbut's legacy includes meeting U.S. President Richard Nixon after the 1972 Olympics, who told her her performance did more to reduce Cold War tension than embassies could in five years. She earned the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year and ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In a 2002 UK poll, her performance was voted No. 46 in the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments. Along with Nadia Comăneci, she brought unprecedented popularity to gymnastics, though her artistry and grace are now seen as a lost art as athleticism has taken precedence.

Did You Know?

• Korbut was the first gymnast inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.
• She performed the first backward release move ever by a woman on uneven bars in 1969.
• In 2017, she sold her 1972 and 1976 Olympic medals at auction for $333,500.
• She appeared on an episode of Celebrity Boxing in 2002, losing by unanimous decision to Darva Conger.