Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace by Georgia Cervin

Abstract

Scholars interested in the role of sports in the Cold War will be intrigued by Degrees of Difficulty, Georgia Cervin’s book about women’s artistic gymnastics. Cervin is herself a former “international gymnast.” Much of the book deals with issues of greater interest to sport historians, ranging from the origins of the sport and its adaptation for women, to the heartbreaking and infuriating details about the abuse of gymnasts that caused the sport such scandal and agony in recent years. Yet Degrees of Difficulty also addresses the intersection of gymnastics and politics in the Cold War, with Cervin promising to challenge “what we know about the Cold War and international relations throughout this period” (p. 4). Among the stars here are Czechoslovakia’s Věra Čáslavská, who became an international celebrity in the 1960s with her gold medal performances and her beauty, to say nothing of her wedding to a fellow Czechoslovak Olympian during the Olympics in October 1968, two months after the Prague Spring had been crushed by Soviet troops. The USSR’s own Olga Korbut became the pig-tailed darling of the 1972 Olympics in part because of her effusive, emotional approach, which was so unlike the robotic demeanor common in elite East-bloc athletes. In 1976, the young Romanian Nadia Comaneci achieved fame across the Cold War divide, despite her robotic demeanor, when she posted the sport’s first perfect score at the Montreal Olympics. Gymnastics diplomacy sometimes served the purposes of the Soviet Union, which generally dominated the sport, but often the story was more complicated. On the medal stand in Mexico City, Čáslavská turned her head down and away during the playing of the USSR’s national anthem to protest the Soviet invasion of her homeland. The Soviet-Romanian rivalry in the 1970s and 1980s saw many outbursts of protest, especially from Romanian coach Bela Karolyi, often stemming from his unhappiness over the judging, which suffered from pro-Soviet bias and corruption. Cervin skillfully shows how all of this went beyond simple division along Cold War ideological lines. Even the Soviet star Korbut sometimes caused problems for Kremlin officials. In the afterglow of Munich, she and her Soviet gymnastics teammates toured the United States, including a White House visit with President Richard Nixon. Cervin credits this trip for helping to create the favorable diplomatic environment for the summit meeting between Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in Washington in June 1973. More troubling for Soviet officials, Korbut’s emotionalism made her popular in the West but