Gymnastics followers have taken word to the rising success of Sweden in girls’s gymnastics over the previous few years. However one byproduct of this latest success is followers typically incorrectly interpret the bettering outcomes as first time accomplishments in Swedish program historical past. On one event Lauren Hopkins over at The Gymternet needed to particularly tackle that she didn’t “neglect” to say Sweden in her record of applications that achieved their greatest placement ever on the 2022 World Championships. The reality is, Sweden has already reached lots of the most prestigious milestones within the sport.
This brings us to one of many extra obscure historic particulars that’s hardly ever talked about today in gymnastics fandom. Sweden was as soon as a powerhouse in girls’s gymnastics and has finished the entire following:
-Gold on the Olympics
-Gold on the World Championships
-Gold in a person occasion
-Workforce Gold on the World Championships
-A number of 4th place finishes in Olympic Workforce Finals
-Medal in World Championships All-Round
-Medal in European Championships All-Round
-Medal in Olympic Occasion Finals
-Gold on a number of apparatuses in Occasion Finals on the World Championships
-Gold on a number of apparatuses in Occasion Finals on the European Championships
-Gained medals in two completely different occasions (Olympics)
-Gained medals in 4 completely different occasions (World Championships)
-Gained medals in 5 completely different occasions (European Championships)
-Gained a medal in each particular person occasion on the European Championships
Then there may be the staggering statistic that Swedish gymnast Ann-Sofi Pettersson completed her profession with extra mixed medals at World Championships and Olympics than numerous iconic All-Round Champions together with Elena Davydova, Mary Lou Retton, Tatiana Gutsu, Carly Patterson, Gabby Douglas and Sunisa Lee.
Swedish girls’s gymnastics was as soon as such a dominant and influential drive that the very first time a lady carried the torch within the opening ceremony of an Olympic video games, it was a member of the Swedish girls’s gymnastics program. Ladies’s gymnastics was the game the place this main milestone in reaching gender equality on the Olympics was first achieved and it wasn’t Vera Caslavska or Larissa Latynina, however the Swede Karin Lindberg. She is formally credited because the eighth individual ever to be given the glory to function a gap ceremony torchbearer, however most importantly had ended the custom of this position being reserved completely for the lads.
The story of Karin Lindberg breaking the gender barrier within the opening ceremony has its origins in 1949 when the IOC awarded the 1956 Olympics to Australia. However to be able to safe their victory Australian Olympic organizers had both uncared for to say or considerably downplayed the influence their stringent animal quarantine legal guidelines would have on the video games. This led to a disaster the place equestrian couldn’t be held along side the remainder of the 1956 Summer season Olympics and was syphoned off into its personal separate Olympic Video games that might be held in Stockholm, Sweden.
For that reason, many Olympic report books rely 1956 as having three separate Olympic Video games, one every for Summer season, Winter and equestrian. The 1956 Stockholm equestrian Olympic Video games would go down as a fluke one-time occasion, the likes of which has by no means occurred earlier than or since. However as a result of it was an Olympic occasion, held in a unique nation, and at a unique time of the 12 months since Sweden and Australia expertise the summer season season in numerous months, naturally it was handled as its personal separate Olympics together with having its personal opening ceremony.
Because the Olympic hosts Sweden was allowed to pick their very own athletes for the ceremonial position of carrying the torch and lighting the Olympic cauldron with a particular emphasis positioned on the position being break up between a female and male athlete. However there was one remaining impediment, Sweden had a powerful males’s equestrian program, however the identical couldn’t be stated for his or her girls’s program. What Sweden had as a substitute was a strong girls’s gymnastics crew and that was what they wished to showcase as a substitute.
Karin Lindberg had been the top-ranked Swedish gymnast from the final Olympics and this unorthodox chain of occasions involving horses is how girls’s gymnastics grew to become the game the place girls have been first given official recognition within the IOC torch ceremony. Males’s gymnastics wouldn’t have an athlete taking part within the torch ceremony till 48 years later with Greece’s Ioannis Melissanidis on the 2004 Olympics, with the development then repeating itself on the following Olympic Video games in 2008 when China chosen each Li Ning and Li Xiaoshuang for the position. As for Karin Lindberg, she stays the primary and final gymnast from the ladies’s aspect of the game to do it.
However Lindberg and that period of Swedish gymnastics have been extra than simply torchbearers. Lindberg herself was a 3x Olympian and an Olympic gold medalist. In 1952 she had been the very best scoring member of the Swedish program and in case you retroactively utilized fashionable period nation limits to the All-Round standings, she would have completed seventh within the Olympic All-Round that 12 months. Lindberg had been the #1 ranked gymnast on vault on the 1948 Olympics however was denied a gold medal as a result of medals in particular person occasions wouldn’t be awarded till the next Olympics.
However it was one other Swedish gymnast by the identify of Ann-Sofi Pettersson who made historical past on the 1956 Olympics by successful a bronze medal on vault. It wouldn’t be till the 1984 Olympic boycott that one other nation from exterior the Japanese Bloc managed to win an Olympic medal in a person occasion in girls’s gymnastics. Sweden additionally has the excellence of being the one nation from neither the Japanese Bloc nor the fashionable period “Massive 4” to win a medal in a person Olympic occasion up till the 2004 Olympics. For the complete twentieth century Sweden was fairly actually its personal separate class. In a sport with such a notoriously inflexible energy construction within the twentieth century, nobody was in a position to crack the stranglehold a small variety of applications had on the medal rely, aside from in fact, Sweden.
On the 1954 World Championships Swedish gymnasts Ann-Sofi Pettersson (gold) and Evy Berggren (bronze) each gained a medal on vault. This meant Sweden had positioned a number of gymnasts on the identical podium with not less than considered one of them taking gold. The Individuals wouldn’t accomplish the identical till 1984 with Julianne McNamara and Mary Lou Retton, wouldn’t accomplish that beneath non-boycott circumstances till 1993 with Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes, and wouldn’t accomplish that in a non-boycotted full sized Group-1 competitors that includes a Workforce Finals till 2003 (Chellsie Memmel and Hollie Vise).
And when Sweden did so in 1954, they have been competing towards a full power Soviet lineup in a time interval the place not even 3-per nation limits had come into existence.
And but the person occasions the place Sweden was in a position to declare some moderately extraordinary milestones weren’t even their greatest occasions. That looks as if a moderately ridiculous assertion to make contemplating Sweden has gold medals on each vault and the uneven bars. However Sweden’s largest power was competing in Group Gymnastics throughout a time interval the place such occasions have been nonetheless contested in girls’s inventive gymnastics. The 1952 and 1956 Olympics featured a “seventh occasion” in crew moveable equipment that well-known gymnasts together with Larissa Latynina competed in what was the forerunner to fashionable rhythmic group gymnastics. This was Sweden’s specialty and so they medaled on this occasion at each Olympics and World Championships it was ever contested in.
What made Swedish gymnastics so important previous to the Nineteen Sixties was, Swedish gymnastics.
If that final sentence sounds complicated, it’s as a result of there may be “Swedish gymnastics” this system, but additionally “Swedish Gymnastics” a former occasion inside inventive gymnastics that takes its identify from Sweden. That is what makes Sweden completely different from different nations with a wealthy gymnastics historical past, for Sweden their legacy goes past successful medals. Sweden was one of many originators of the game.
Through the late 1800s and early 1900s as gymnastics was making an attempt to determine itself as an organized sport, three nations with three completely different types, interpretations, and visions competed towards one another making an attempt to make their model of the game the dominant kind. Together with Germany and Czechoslovakia (Bohemia), Sweden was the third nation. For a quick second “Swedish gymnastics” was an formally sanctioned IOC occasion that Sweden’s males’s gymnastics crew gained two gold medals in. These are legit medals which are counted in the direction of Sweden’s official medal tally and nations equivalent to Denmark, Belgium, and Norway even have medals in “Swedish gymnastics.”
However Sweden was going through an uphill battle making an attempt to make “Swedish gymnastics” a core gymnastics occasion in future Olympics. Germany was a far bigger and thus considerably extra influential nation. Not that nationwide affect was the one cause Swedish-style gymnastics light away. The Germans merely had a extra fan-appealing product with their emphasis on athletes competing as people.
Sweden had a wealthy gymnastics custom which gave them the sources for Olympic success. Sweden didn’t simply have a powerful girls’s program, their males’s program was additionally successful medals. All of this success was the byproduct of a rustic the place gymnastics custom ran deep. However occasions change and with the rise of the Soviets coupled with the game transferring away from the fashion of gymnastics that Sweden had been a pioneer of, the nation discovered itself on the shedding finish of change.
The way forward for gymnastics could be the well-funded applications of the Japanese Bloc, together with nations equivalent to Japan, China, and the US that every one had large inhabitants benefits. Sweden reached the highest of the game proper as their window of alternative appeared to be closing. Sweden has a really noticeable presence within the report e-book resulting from its medals from the Fifties which are straightforward for anybody to accidently stumble throughout whereas searching gymnastics Wikipedia. It seems like a symbolic gesture that the Swedish program wished to do one thing to remind folks that for 40 years from the 1910s to the Fifties they have been a real gymnastics powerhouse.
The 1950 World Championships struggled with a scarcity of attendance from Japanese Europe making it a uncommon Group-1 competitors that didn’t obtain sturdy participation charges from the main powers. Sweden was in a position to make use of this competitors to show what they might do beneath circumstances the place they have been going through a decreased aggressive subject. Sweden gained gold on three completely different occasions together with the crew competitors, together with a silver medal within the All-Round.
Then got here the 1963 European Championships the place by this level Sweden’s glory days have been over, however with the Japanese Bloc as soon as once more not in attendance resulting from a boycott, Sweden was in a position to showcase its power one final time towards a weakened aggressive subject. Sweden gained a medal on each occasion, two of which have been gold. For Sweden, that was the place their story as a gymnastics powerhouse got here to an finish.
A lot has been stated about Sweden qualifying into Workforce Finals on the European Championships for the primary time in 2024. However for lots of the previous powers equivalent to Sweden, Poland, and Hungary, they lack numerous milestones on the European Championships solely as a result of their early Fifties success predates the creation of the ladies’s European Championships in 1957 and the Nineteen Nineties-era growth of a girls’s crew occasion. What Sweden achieved in 2024 was attain one of many few milestones it doesn’t but have.
Gymnasts equivalent to Emelie Westlund, Nathalie Westlund, Tonya Paulsson, and Jonna Adlertag have undoubtedly introduced Sweden to a better stage lately. However they aren’t making historical past for Sweden.
Historical past is returning.
