Meets, Results, and Ephemera from the Past
Zhang Jinjing s career was short but brilliant. Within just a few years, he rose from precocious teenage prospect to world champion and captain of the Chinese men s team. Just as quickly, however, it began to unravel. Injuries, disciplinary setbacks, and the relentless emergence of a new generation steadily pushed him out of contention. These translations [ ]
Few gymnasts of the 1990s combined technical precision with artistic elegance as successfully as Huang Liping. A world champion on parallel bars in 1994 and a member of China s gold medal-winning team at the 1994 World Championships, he also helped the Chinese men win the silver medal at the 1996 Olympic Games. Renowned for the [ ]
Olympic all-around champion, world all-around champion, and one of China s greatest athletes, Li Xiaoshuang was among the biggest stars in world gymnastics during the mid-1990s. Yet there is much about him that remains unfamiliar to English-language readers. For starters, Li Xiaoshuang is not actually his given name. Born an identical twin, he was originally named [ ]
Li Jing belonged to one of the strongest generations in Chinese men s gymnastics, but he never wanted to be known simply as another member of the Li family. As the careers of Li Yuejiu, Li Xiaoping, and Li Ning captured international attention, fans often remarked that Li Jing even looked like Li Ning, the legendary [ ]
Valeri Liukin emerged as one of the Soviet Union s leading gymnasts in 1987. During the first half of the year, he won the European and USSR all-around titles and established himself as a contender for the World Championships. His breakthrough coincided with one of the sport s defining moments of the decade: the successful introduction of [ ]
By the end of 1991, Li Chunyang had established himself as the world s premier horizontal bar specialist. He won back-to-back world titles in Stuttgart (1989) and Indianapolis (1991), helped China to consecutive World Championship team silver medals, the men s team gold at the 1990 Asian Games, and Olympic team silver at Barcelona in 1992. This [ ]
Within the gymnastics community, Lou Yun is best known for winning back-to-back Olympic vault titles in 1984 and 1988. Two of his innovations—a handspring rudi on vault and a double side salto with a ¾ twist on floor exercise—appear in the FIG Code of Points under his name. Outside the competitive arena, however, he has [ ]
The two texts translated here—a 2001 profile from New Sports and a 2004 Sina.com chat transcript—capture former Chinese gymnast Li Xiaoping during a new phase of his life. One of the world s leading pommel horse specialists in the early 1980s, Li won the world title in 1981, helped China to its first men s team world [ ]
The 1981 World Gymnastics Championships were rife with scandal—a positive doping test and age falsification that even concerned the IOC. But another story has been largely forgotten: the championships were never supposed to take place in Moscow at all. They were supposed to be held in Mexico. In March 1981, Mexico formally withdrew as host, [ ]
Tsukahara Mitsuo opens his autobiography not with triumph but with catastrophe. Rather than beginning with his eponymous vault or the dismount that made him famous, or with any of his five Olympic gold medals, he begins in February 1980, when he sustained a cervical spine injury, which effectively ended his bid for a fourth consecutive [ ]