Olga Korbut

Lore & Background

Olga Korbut was born in Grodno to Valentin and Valentina Korbut. After World War II, the family moved to Grodno from Dubniaki. She started training at age 8 and entered a Belarusian sports school at age 9 under coach Renald Knysh. Her first trainer was Olympic gold medalist Elena Volchetskaya, but she moved to Knysh's group a year later. Initially finding her 'lazy and capricious,' Knysh saw potential in her talent, unusually supple spine, and charisma. With him, she learned a difficult backward somersault on the balance beam, debuting it at a competition in the USSR 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 competition in the 1969 USSR championships and won a gold medal on the balance beam the next year. Illness and injury prevented her from competing in many events before the 1972 Summer Olympics.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Korbut's acrobatics brought her much fame. She was a favorite for the all-around after her dynamic team performance, but missed her mount on bars three times, and the title went to teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva. She won three gold medals for balance beam, floor exercise, and team competitions. In the uneven bars event finals, after a successful routine, the audience whistled and shouted vulgar remarks at judges when a score of 9.8 was displayed, believing it too low; the judges refused to change it, and she finished with the silver medal. Korbut later said she considered it an example of unfair judging. In 1973, she won the Russian and World Student Games and a silver medal in the all-around at the European Championships. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Soviet coaches designated her to beat Romanian prodigy Nadia Comăneci, but Korbut was injured and her performances were sub-par. She collected a team gold medal and an individual silver medal for the balance beam.

Korbut graduated from the Grodno Pedagogical Institute in 1977, became a teacher, and retired from competition. She married Leonid Bortkevich, a member of Belarusian folk band Pesniary, and had a son, Richard, in 1979. In 1991, she and her family immigrated to the United States, prompted by concerns about the aftereffects of the Chernobyl disaster on Belarus. They settled in New Jersey, where she taught gymnastics, later moving to Georgia.

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 one of the most popular sports worldwide. She exemplified a deliberate trend toward smaller women in the sport, standing 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) and weighing 82 pounds (37 kg). Her eponymous skill, the Korbut flip—a backflip performed on the uneven bars from a standing position on the high bar—was first performed at an international competition in 1972 but later made illegal in the Code of Points because standing on the bars was banned. After the 1972 Olympics, she met U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House, who told her that her performance did more to reduce Cold War political tension than embassies could in five years. Her 1972 achievement earned her the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year and ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In a 2002 UK poll, the public voted 'Olga Korbut charms the world' No. 46 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments. Along with Nadia Comăneci, she brought unprecedented popularity to the sport in the early to mid-1970s, attributes now seen as a lost art as athleticism has taken precedence. In 2017, she sold her 1972 and 1976 Olympic medals, among 32 lots, for $333,500 at Heritage Auctions.

Did You Know?

• Korbut was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988.
• She performed the first backward release move ever by a woman on uneven bars in 1969.
• After the 1972 Olympics, U.S. President Richard Nixon told her her performance did more to reduce Cold War tension than embassies could in five years.
• In 2017, she sold her Olympic medals, including two golds and a silver from Munich, for $333,500 at auction.