HallreMarks
[HallreMarks Archive]
The “HALLreMARKS” link will feature informal articles, thoughts, extended biographies, and works by individuals who have experienced much in the world of gymnastics. We trust you will enjoy the themes implicit in each presentation and you will find an idea or two to help guide your interest in our great sport. So, enjoy the writings and all to come.
Muriel Grossfeld
The Dolly Who Became an Olympia
Part: VI: Muriel Grossfeld Network Television Commentator and United States National Coaching Staff
By Muriel’s Brother
Bruce A. Davis, Professor Emeritus, Miami Dade College
Director of Flip Flops & Fitness Gymnastics School of Apollo Beach
E-mail: Bruce@Letstalkgymnastics.com & Brucedavis56@verizon.net
ABC’s Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay, the lead sports telecaster, started the popularization of gymnastics at the Olympic Games. In particular, women’s gymnastics during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games gave birth to a generation of “Gym Moms.” Olympic gymnastics competition for women immediately received high rankings with television viewing audiences following Olga Korbut’s performances at the Munich Games of 1972, Americans wanted to know whom the next “Olympic queen of Gymnastics” would be. Nadia Comaneci provided the answer with her six scores of 10 in the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. These two women, performing on world-wide television, provided a constant elevation of the fortunes of women’s gymnastics in America and abroad.
Women television sports commentators were a rarity even during the days after 1972. Muriel Grossfeld helped change all that. She was the women’s gymnastics commentator of choice in the late seventies. She was hired by CBS to cover national and international gymnastics events. She could also contribute expert commentary on the men’s gymnastics. It was refreshing to hear Muriel’s expert analysis of competition routines. She was up to date on the men and women’s competition rules and she knew many of the gymnasts personally.
The “tit for tat” Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984 definitely hurt the sport of gymnastics and a great number of “forgotten Olympians” worldwide. It did help that the 1984 Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles and that the US men’s (gold) and women’s (silver) gymnastics teams medaled and won their first individual event gold medals in the post WWII era. Mary Lou Retton’s gold in the all-around and Peter Vidmar’s silver all-around medal were uplifting. The relatively new and growing American “private gymnastic club industry” needed positive publicity about the sport of artistic gymnastics for men and women. Gymnasts with “star name recognition” and with gold medals around their necks could help sell local gymnastics training programs to the public. The Karolyi’s, Marta and Bela, had defected to the United States from Romania in 1981 along with dance choreographer Geza Posar. The Karolyi’s coached Dianne Durham and Olympians Mary Lou Retton and Julianne McNamara after these gymnasts left their original coaches. Bela was selected to serve as head coach for the US women’s team to Seoul Korea for 1988 Olympic Games. The US team was given a .5 team penalty on the uneven parallel bars event due to a coaching error by Bela Karolyi. The penalty cost the US a bronze team medal in Seoul.
The new International Olympic Committee President, Juan Samaranch, pushed to eliminate the amateur code and allow professional athletes to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. At Barcelona, the FIG decided to conduct a World Championship on an annual basis and to even conduct a World Championship for event specialists rather than just all-around team performers. Specialization was a dramatic departure from the previous sacred concept of being an all-around gymnast. The USSR was in the process of collapsing due to financial failures brought by factors that included the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Accomplished Soviet gymnasts Arthur Akopian, Vladimir Artemov and Vladimir Novikov as well as other known gymnasts; left the USSR and made homes in the United States. American choreographer Tammy Biggs, Olympian Linda Metheny Mulvihill, Coach Linda Kardos Woods, Olympian Pam Bileck and National Champion Toby Towson along with the three USSR men, and Posar, the Romanian, and Muriel came together to form a group known as the US National Coaching Staff (USNCS). Muriel was the undesignated leader. USNCS’s efforts grew out of an idea first conceived in 1989 and were more firmly in place after the 1992 Olympic Games. The members of this staff do not coach gymnasts from a private gym school operation that they are affiliated with. The USNCS members are required to be available for all the training and competition activities for international gymnastics events.
Muriel and USNCS members feel that they were at least in part responsible for the US women’s winning of the gold team medal over the Russians in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The USNCS had been instrumental in schooling the American team in the compulsory exercises. The gold medal team members became known as “the magnificent seven” and included Amanda Borden, Dominique Dawes, Amy Chow, Dominique Moceanu, Kerri Strug, Jaycie Phelps, and Shannon Miller. It was the first team gold for the US women in Olympic history.
Kerri Strug’s second vault performance success, after critically twisting her ankle and falling on her first attempt in the team competition, is considered a “great moment in Olympic sports” by Olympic authorities. The fact is that the US had already won the competition without the necessity of Strug performing a second vault. It makes one wonder about competency of the US coaching staff and the quality of “color commentating.” Strug’s further injury to her ankle from the second vault forced her to scratch from the all-around and individual event finals that she had qualified for. She had to settle for only a gold team medal. Newspaper headlines all over the world carried a next day picture of her being held by her coach Bela Karolyi. This was quite a stirring moment for American gymnastics, but for those who had seen the Soviet final score before Strug’s second vault and knew that Strug’s didn’t need the score of a second vault to win the team competition can only speculate about why it was made. It probably cost Strug an additional medal or two.
Atlanta was also the last Olympics where the gymnasts would compete compulsory exercises (required routines). From now on it would be optional routines only in both the Olympics and the World Championships! New concepts about individual athlete preparation, the team selection process and the use of event specialists were in the making. World Championships being contested every year created more pressure on everyone involved in international gymnastics including the USNCS.
The 2000 Olympic Games were returning to the Southern Hemisphere for only the second time in history. Muriel’s first Olympic experience was in Melbourne in 1956. Now forty-four years later she would help prepare a team to compete “down under” in Sydney. Of “the magnificent seven”, only Amy Chow and Dominique Dawes made the 2000 Olympic Games.
Sydney was a disaster for all the women gymnasts in the competition. The recently designed unisex-table vaulting horse (used by both men and women) was accidentally set one notch too low for the women’s vaulting competition in the all-around finals. The new horse was designed to accommodate the now popular “Yurchenko” round-off approach vaulting. A fatality and a paralysis had already occurred by gymnasts executing Yurchenko style vaults using the former traditional horse. The lower height setting particularly affected the taller gymnasts who had to bend down slightly to block the horse with their arms. The tendency was to over-rotate the approach and then under-rotate the final somersault and not land on their feet. The lower height affected the first rotation of gymnasts competing in the all-around finals among which were the tallish American Elise Ray and the Russian Svetlana Khorkina, the best woman gymnast on the planet. The height deficiency was detected and corrected after the first squad rotation. The affected gymnasts were given a chance to vault again at the end of the meet; an opportunity that Khorhina declined. The credibility of the final all-around scores and placements will always remain questionable at best. What a fiasco! The situation might be comparable to a basketball goal, tennis net or track hurdles being set too high; and of course in this case, it was far more dangerous. The US women finished a dismal seventh place team with Ray placing thirteenth all-around. There were no medals in the individual events. Khorkina finished 10th all-around and was robbed of her Olympic all-around gold! To compound matters, Romanian Andreea Raducan was stripped of her all-around gold medal. The Romanians maintained that Raducan had taken a banned substance for a common cold.
The 2004 Olympic Games in Athens Greece brought new hopes and challenges. American Carly Patterson had finished second to Svetlana Khorhina in the all-around in the 2003 World Championships in Anaheim, California. Muriel and the USNCS helped prepare a veteran team for the Athens Olympics. When the competition was complete, the US had silver medals in women’s and men’s team competition and gold medalists in the all-around for both men’s (Paul Hamm) and women’s (Carly Patterson) artistic gymnastics!
Comically, when I ask Muriel when she will have had enough of international gymnastics competitions she will say that the next Olympics are her last one! I don’t know when that final Olympics will really be for her. I do know that she is the only American women in history to participate in the Olympic Games as a gymnast, a head coach and as a judge; and, I do know that she has made more impact on American women’s gymnastics than anyone in history. I am proud of her accomplishments. She is likewise admired by several generations of young women gymnasts that she has helped and coached. Most importantly for me, she is my sister of whom I couldn’t be prouder!
