artistic gymnastics

artistic gymnastics, the most popular and widely recognized discipline of gymnastics that includes events such as balance beam, floor exercise, and rings. Each event in artistic gymnastics involves the use of different apparatus and equipment to showcase an athlete’s strength, agility, balance, spatial awareness, and gracefulness. It is one of the original disciplines of the modern Olympic Games and is among the most popular for spectators, often claiming the highest viewership ratings of any televised Olympic program. In the closely related sport of rhythmic gymnastics, athletes perform exercises with the aid of hand apparatuses, including ropes, hoops, balls, clubs, and ribbons.

Men’s artistic gymnastics comprises six events: floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar. Women compete in four: floor exercise, vault, uneven bars, and balance beam.

History and organization

Modern artistic gymnastics was formalized as a sport in 19th-century Europe. In 1881 the Fédération Internationale Gymnastique (FIG) was founded to supervise competition and create standard rules. The organizers of the modern Olympic Games chose gymnastics to be one of the nine sports in the 1896 Athens Games (the others were athletics [track and field], cycling, swimming, weightlifting, wrestling, fencing, shooting, and tennis). That first competition was limited to male athletes and included events on parallel bars, pommel horse, rings, rope climbing, horizontal bar, and vault. Women gymnasts first competed in the Olympics at Amsterdam in 1928. The most prestigious non-Olympic competition is the FIG world championships. They were first held for men in 1903 and for women in 1934 and take place every year, excepting Olympic years.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

More From Britannica

gymnastics: Developments in Europe

Events

• Balance beam: A female-only event that features a gymnast performing delicately poised movements atop a balance beam that is 10 cm (4 inches) wide, 5 meters (16.4 feet) long, and raised 125 cm (4.1 feet) from the floor. The performer begins the exercise by mounting the beam by either a vault or a jump and executes movements that must include steps, running, jumps, turns, sitting positions, and some held, or posed, positions.
• Floor exercise: The most artistic of the events, floor exercises are choreographed routines performed on a 12-meter (40-foot) square floor. It requires a series of movements combining elements of flexibility, strength, jumps, holding of poses, and balance, and the whole routine must be performed with rhythm and harmony.
• Horizontal bar: Also known as the “high bar,” this event is performed only by male gymnasts. The apparatus consists of a bar 2.8 cm (1.1 inches) in diameter and 2.4 meters (7.8 feet) long, raised about 2.8 meters (9.1 feet) from the floor. Gymnasts grip the bar and perform a variety of swings, vaults over the bar, changes of direction and position, and releases from the bar before dismounting.
• Parallel bars: This apparatus features two bars 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) long, 2 meters (6.5 feet) high, and between 42 and 52 cm (16.5 and 20.5 inches) apart, set parallel to each other. A male gymnast lifts himself between the two bars and then performs a routine of swings, rolls, vaults, and a dismount.
• Pommel horse: In this event a male gymnast performs movements with his trunk and legs, such as single or double leg circles and crosses of the legs (scissors), as well as turns and changes of the hands’ grasp on the horse and handles (pommels). The horse is about 1.6 meters (63 inches) long, 35 cm (13.8 inches) wide, and 115 cm (45.3 inches) from the floor.
• Rings: This event features two rings suspended by straps hanging about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) above the floor and 50 cm (19.7 inches) apart. A male gymnast uses them to lift, spin, and rotate his body before dismounting.
• Uneven bars: Sometimes known as “asymmetrical parallel bars,” this event is only performed by female gymnasts. The apparatus consists of two bars of the same dimensions as those used in the men’s parallel bar event except set at different heights. Athletes perform a variety of swinging and hanging exercises before dismounting.
• Vault: This high-flying event, performed by men and women, consists of gymnasts running at full speed, leaping onto a springboard, and then using their hands and arms to push off a vaulting table. They fly into the air, spinning and twisting before landing on a mat. The vaulting table is a slightly inclined padded surface 95 cm (37.4 inches) wide and 120 cm (47.2 inches) long that is set on a stand and raised 125 cm (49.2 inches) from the floor for women and 135 cm (53.1 inches) for men.

Scoring

A panel of nine judges determines a gymnast’s score. Each event score is the sum of a difficulty component and an execution component. The execution score starts at 10, and judges deduct points for mistakes or poor form. The difficulty score starts at zero, and judges add points for each move on the basis of how hard it is to execute. Under this system there is no theoretical cap on how high the overall score can be. However, in practice, the record highest scores in Olympic competition are between 15 and 17 points. For example, Nastia Liukin scored a 16.900 in uneven bars during the team final at the 2008 Beijing Games; this remains the highest-ever Olympic score in any event. The current scoring system was implemented in 2006, replacing the previous rules under which a gymnast could score a “perfect 10.”