364: 80s Fight! (Commissioned)
GymCastic: The Gymnastics Podcast
GymCastic: The Gymnastics Podcast
4.6 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2019
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The greatest rivalries of the 1980s! This week, we have a commissioned episode from Club Gym Nerd member Kimo, who asked for an episode all about the 1980s rivalries between the Romanians and the Soviets, both team and individually. We are oh so happy to oblige!
Setting the scene
- A history of Soviet dominance
- Romania's 1976 emergence
- The 1977 Europeans Romanian WALKOUT!
- The first great Romanian/Soviet rivalry—Nadia vs. Nellie and how it may or may not have influenced the future of gymnastics
- Romania wins in 1979, the "Nadia Infected Wrist" worlds
- The true story of Nadia's fake injury and government control
The Rivalry
- The 1980 Olympics of crazy judging
- Nadia vs. Davydova and the case of the 30-minute delay
- Nadia vs. Nellie and the case of the "computer malfunction"
- Mukhina's paralysis and the race for innovative difficulty
- 1981 Worlds
- The silliest scores of 1981 (oh, it's 9.800 for this)
- The case of the Szabo/Agache impersonation of 1981
- Romania ends up 4th. That's right 4th.
- 1983 Worlds
- Innovation from an all-star Soviet team—YURCHENKO vaults, the SHISHOVA
- Just fangirling about Mostepanova for a while
- More fun with bonkers scoring
- 1984 boycott gives us an opportunity to talk about China
- 1985 Worlds
- Soviet Union casually adds Omelianchik and Shushunova to its already stellar 1983 team
- The Soviets were so deep that Shushunova placed FIFTH on her own team in qualification
- The evolution of Romanian floor to be less "chicken dance" and whether it contributed to what happened next
- 1987 and THE TIDE TURNS
- Silivas wins the European AA title in Moscow, and the Soviets (gasp) fall
- Romania gets its first world team title in 8 years
- How the addition of Aurelia Dobre changed the game for Romania
- Pro-Soviet bias in skill naming
- Dobre vs. Shushunova vs. Silivas vs. Baitova vs. Omelianchik. This was no two-way rivalry
- The 1988 Olympics and how timing is everything
FURTHER READING
- Firsts, Named Skills, and Innovators in Women's Artistic Gymnastics
- Zhaoqing World Challenge Cup
- 2019 JO Nationals
- 2019 Spring/Summer Schedule
SUPPORT THE SHOW
RELATED EPISODES
- 344: Shushunova vs. Silivas 1988 (Commissioned)
- 342: A Quitter's Try – The CNN Parkettes Documentary (Commissioned)
- 341: The Call Is Coming from Inside the House
- 340: USAG and The Case of the Missing Documents
- 327: 1993 NCAA Nationals (Commissioned)
- 325: Olympics of Difference Makers (Commissioned)
- 313: Best Floor Routines EVAH! (Commissioned)
- 312: 4th Is the New 1st (Commissioned)
- 309: Perfect Form – The O'Beirne Code (Commissioned)
- 308: 2004 Olympic All-Around Final (Commissioned)
- 306: Gymnastics Fails (Commissioned)
- 304: The GymCastic Olympics (Commissioned)
- 281: Myths, Legends, and Unexpected Moments PART 2 (Commissioned)
- 279: A Diva Is Magical: The Svetlana Khorkina Episode (Commissioned)
- 278: 2000 Sydney All-Around Final (Commissioned)
- 262: 1996 Olympic Event Finals (Commissioned)
- 258: The Fluff Cast (Commissioned)
- 256: 1996 Olympic All-Around Final (Commissioned)
- 255: 1996 Olympic Team Final (Commissioned)
- 252: Myths, Legends and Unexpected Moments in Gymnastics History (Commissioned)
- 228: Leotards (Commissioned)
- 225: 1992 Olympics Recap with Wendy Bruce (Commissioned)
- 185: 2008 Olympic All-Around Finals (Commissioned)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Remember the show is PG-13 so you might hear a naughty word or two. |
| 0:03.8 | Today the greatest rivalries of the 80s |
| 0:10.4 | concentrating on the Romanians and Soviets. |
| 0:13.0 | We're going to set the stage with the pre-80s dramatics, |
| 0:16.5 | including the 1977 Romanian protest walkout, |
| 0:20.4 | Nellie Kim never getting over the fact that the world did not recognize that she got a 10 minutes after |
| 0:27.5 | Nautia got a 10. We're going to talk about age falsification, the Iron Curtain, China being like, boom boom we are still doing gymnastics the |
| 0:34.4 | whole time completely corrupt judging boycotts bogan ska biting and beautiful gymnastics |
| 0:41.2 | this is episode 364 for May 22nd, 2019 and welcome to the |
| 0:48.6 | number one gymnastics podcast in the galaxy. I'm Jessica and I'm here with Spencer from the Balance Beam situation. |
| 0:55.8 | Let's talk about this commission. |
| 0:57.6 | Yes, this episode has been commissioned by club gym nerd member Kimo, who requested an episode all about the 1980s rivalries between the Romanians |
| 1:06.0 | and the Soviets, both team and individually. Yes, please. I'm so excited. |
| 1:10.7 | Thank you for letting us do this, Kim spelled KIMO. Club gymnered members like chemo help us pay the bills and deliver our weekly |
| 1:19.7 | podcast and live shows and travel for the meat coverage that we do. Lots of that coming up this summer and next year if you'd like to become a club gymnard member see details at gymcastic.com and there are membership tears and little perks and all the way up to the very top tier, which is the intergalactic champion like Kimo who can commission a full episode. |
| 1:41.0 | So let's begin. |
| 1:43.8 | So I want to set the scene for the Romanian Soviet rivalry and expand the purview of the |
| 1:51.2 | Commission a little bit. I'm sure it'll be okay because there's some weirdness from the 70s that we absolutely have to talk about so in the beginning |
| 1:59.5 | There were the Soviets from From 1952 to 1978, the Soviet Union won every world team title, |
| 2:08.1 | every Olympic team title, every world team title except one in 1966 when Czechoslovakia led by Vera Chislovska won the team title in |
| 2:16.4 | Dortman. |
| 2:17.4 | So there was one competition from 1952 to 1978 where the Soviet Union didn't win the team title, they were dominating every single |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GymCastic: The Gymnastics Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of GymCastic: The Gymnastics Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.