Yelena Davydova

Yelena Victorovna Davydova (Russian:?????? ??????????? ?????????) (born August 7, 1961 in Voronezh, 400 miles south of Moscow), is a Russian (former Soviet) gymnast, winner of the Olympic all-around title in Gymnastics at the 1980 Summer Olympics.

All-Around Olympic Champion

Thursday July 24 began the All-Around final. Davydova began in 5th place. In first place was Gnauck,East Germany, then Shaposhnikova USSR, 3rd Eberle Romania,4th Comaneci Romania.

Related Topics:
July 24 - East Germany - USSR - Romania

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Davydova began on beam, Comaneci on floor - a disadvantage for Davydova because there is such a premium of accuracy in the beam exercise that the gymnast prefers to be fully attuned to the rigours of that days competition before attempting it.

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There were only 4 routines left for each gymnast to compete. With 2 down and 2 to go the places were now : Gnauck 1st, Davydova 2nd, Shaposhnikova and Comaneci joint 3rd. Nadia Comaneci then scored a 10 on bars, the only gymnast to receive a perfect score that night.(It was her first perfect score on bars in a major competition since the 1976 Olympics).

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Maxi Gnauck held the lead until her last routine when she vaulted insecurely. She scored 9.7,on a vault with a start value of 9.9, the same as she had scored for this vault at 1979 European Championships in Denmark and 79 World Championships in USA.

Related Topics:
Denmark - USA

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Yelena Davydova had scored 9.85 on beam, 9.95 on floor,9.9 on vault.She now had her bars exercise left to compete. Only a great exercise would be good enough. But bars had a casualty list of high profile gymnasts - Nadia Comaneci and Dumitreatu Turner had fallen during the team competition, V?ra ?áslavská fell at 64 Olympics event final, Natalya Kuchinskaya at 67 Europeans, Kuchinskaya fell at 68 Olympics, Korbut lost her chance of being Olympic AA champion in 72, losing the gold medal and finishing 7th,Turischeva in 75 Europeans,Kim and Korbut 76 Olympics event final,Elena Namushina and Nadia 79 Europeans,Comaneci at 79 World Cup, Shaposhnikova, Zakharova and Filatova 79 Worlds. A mistake by Davydova would result in gold for either Gnauck or Comaneci.

Related Topics:
Dumitreatu Turner - V?ra ?áslavská - Natalya Kuchinskaya - Turischeva - Kim - Korbut - 76 Olympics - Nadia

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Davydova's exercise included a Tkatchev (which no other female gymnast could do at the time),long swing 1.5 pirouette,Giant. Anton Gadjos,in his 1997 book,"Artistic Gymnastics : A history of development" highlights Davydova's Tkatchev from the 80 Olympics.The FIG website describes this exercise as "Fantastic".

Related Topics:
80 Olympics - FIG

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A minute after she had left the podium her score came up - 9.95. Davydova was in the lead and only Comaneci could overtake her.

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Nadia Comaneci needed a score of 9.925 to tie or more than that to win the gold outright. The last time she had scored as high as this in an AA final was at the 76 Olympics.Out of the 100 optional beam exercises performed at the 1980 Olympics only 1 scored as high as Comaneci needed.

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After one of her back flips Comaneci had to flail her arms for balance. Her knee bent slightly under 360 degree rotation. There was a pause between her front aerial and side aerial. She landed slightly askew, taking a step back (normally a 0.1 deduction).

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The controversy began when no score was registered on the scoreboard. For half an hour gymnastics stole the screen from all the other sports and even the adverts on Western TV stations were delayed. Deductions were taken in tenths by the judges, i.e. 0 if the judge thought the exercise was perfect,0.1,0.2,0.3 etc.The marks were 10 from the Bulgarian judge,9.9 from the Czech judge,9.8 from both the Soviet and Polish judges.With the top and bottom marks being discarded,and the remaining 2 being added together and then divided by 2,this gave Nadia Comaneci a score of 9.85. This gave her a shared silver with Maxi Gnauck. Nataliya Shaposhnikova finished 4th but would have shared a silver medal with them had she scored 0.05 extra.

Related Topics:
Bulgaria - Czech - Soviet - Polish

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Head Judge on beam, Maria Simionescu of Romania, refused to enter the score as it meant that Comaneci would not win gold.Madame Simionescu had been the Romanian women's gymnastics team coach at the 1956, 1960, 1964 Olympics. She had helped found the gymnastics school where Comaneci trained. Simionescu had been a friend of her since Comaneci's childhood and had given her ballet training. She had travelled with the Romanian team numerous times and socialised with them. She would intervene again in beam event final to restrict the score of Shaposhnikova which would give Comaneci beam gold. Nadia Comaneci repeated her score of 9.85 here. Although the Romanian Head Judge delayed the score of her fellow Romanian, holding up the AA competition for 28 minutes,it was eventually registered.The other Soviet gymnasts aided by an East German and a Swedish gymnast tossed Davydova in the air in celebration.

Related Topics:
Romania - 1956 - 1960 - 1964 - Ballet - East German - Swedish

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Comaneci had outscored Davydova by 0.45 in compulsories but Davydova outscored her in all other stages of the competition where they met.Davydova outscored her by 0.4 in optionals,0.1 in AA final,0.3 in event finals.

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Davydova appeared on the front cover of the European edition of Newsweek magazine,issue August 4 1980. She was voted 14th best female athlete in the world that year. In the Soviet Union, a flower was named after the 2 Yelenas - Davydova and Namushina.

Related Topics:
Newsweek - August 4 - 1980 - Soviet Union

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Under the present Olympic AA scoring system - New Life - Davydova would have won the 1980 AA title by a larger margin and would have won gold on beam. In addition to the AA gold, Davydova won a gold medal with the team and a silver medal on balance beam. While recognised as the best vaulter in event finals Yelena failed to stand her second vault and thus failed to medal. This vault is described below in the paragraph on the 1981 World Championships.

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Davydova won AA gold exactly 2 weeks before her 19th birthday-older than nearly all recent Olympic gymnastic AA champions.

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While there was some criticism of Davydova's victory in the general press this was mainly by reporters who didn't know how gymnastics was scored. Within the gymnastics community itself there was little doubt about the validity of Davydova's win :

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Nadia Comaneci herself in her book, "Letters to a young Gymnast",acknowledges "That day, Yelena just performed better"; John Goodbody in his book "The illustrated history of Gymnastics", 1982, wrote that Davydova was successful because of her "consistency and her willingness to take risks"- over 3 days of competition her lowest score was a 9.8 ;Glenn Sundby, then editor of the International Gymnast (IG) magazine, and founder member of the United States Gymnastics Federation and the International Gymnastics Hall OF Fame and the first Gymnastics World Cup ; Zacharias Nikolaidis,editor of the Greek Gymnastics magazine Dynamiko ; Ursel Baer,a British judge at the 80 Olympics,"Davydova richly deserved to be Olympic champion"; Elisa Estape,a Spanish coach who had all the routines filmed and evaluated praised Davydova's routines in the highest terms and said she should have won by more ; Paul Williams,another British judge there,"Davydova fully deserved her gold medal,with a brilliant display of high quality work"; Maxi Gnauck's coach Juergen Heritz ; Lyn Moran, assistant editor of IG and author of the book "The young Gymnasts" ; Peter Shilston, columnist, British Gymnast magazine ; John Rodda in his book "The Olympic Games".

Related Topics:
Nadia Comaneci - 1982 - United States - Greek

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