medal presentation Veronine appeared to make jest of the fact that he was named the winner feeling perhaps, as many of us did, that Endo probably should have won. On the parallel bars at least the audio ence was spared the agony of having to watch Diamodov again and his scoring machine . . . Kenmotsu missed his mount slightly but that was about all he missed as he scored 9.55. Klimenko executed stutz to handstand three times but apparently was not penalized as he received 9.6. Take· shi Kato did a good peach to handstand (he also did three stutzkhere's and was not penalized) and fini shed with full twisting back somersault dismount. Akinori Naka· yama started with the same mount Dan Millman used last year, straddle straight arm straight leg press, 1;4 pirouette, back somersault, stutz, to upper arm, front up· rise, reverse pirouette, cast, back uprise, straddle cut " L", straight·straight press, and then my notes are unsure but I think he did back somersault to handstand, peach to upper arms, front uprise, front somer· sault dismount with Vz twist, for 9.7. Veronine did an excellent routine in this event and probably should have taken the gold medal but suffered one of what ap· peared to be two mistakes the judges made during the finals (the judging in the finals was so much better than the prelims that it was almost easy to overlook the few mi stakes they did make). I was unable to read my notes on his routine but his mount was cast to support, straddle cut, " L", straight·straight press, stutz, peach, etc., and his dismount was front uprise, front somersault with Vz twist. On the horizontal bar Diamidov was up first and his routine included a hecht vault to r egrasp and full twisting hecht dismount. Klaus Kostle of East Germany was next and performed: Stemme, immediate stoop, imm ediate takemoto (very superior se· quence but his takemoto wa s tak en too straight up and he stalled on it) , then his vault was weak out of the takemoto. Kostle received a 9.5 which the crowd booed but the score was correct. Kenmotsu scored 9.7 with an excellent pirouette sequence in the middle which was too fa st for me to figure out, a vault which was executed with his feet some two feet above the bar, very high, and finished with good hecht with full. Endo had a very good routine going all the way to his dismount but had to tuck on this hecht with full twist in order to land on his feet. Veronine's score again was questionable as he mi ssed his hecht vault being too low on it to get into a pike, good double german, but eagles were fiat, full twisting fly·a-way was technically incorrect but no form break. Nakayama finished off the evening in a prop er manner, contrary to what had preceeded during the evening, as he was not to be denied on the HB. I believe his routine was the same routine that he won with in the 1966 World Championships and it was a beauty. The only break he had was on his full twisting hecht dismount where he had to take a step and bend at the waist quite a bit for 9.8 and a tie with Veronine for the Gold medal. The men's finals, with 6 men in each event lasted four hours !!! That amounts to about 45 minutes to one hour of action and about 3 hours for awards, judging, warm-up, debates, and etc_
1936 Berlin
7.66
20
U.S. MEN'S TEAM AVERAGE SCORE PAST 7 OLYMPICS 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 London
Helsinki
Melborne
Rome
Tokyo
8.60
9.03
9.125
9.253
9.282
OPTIONAL AVERAGE (Optional Routines Only)
1968 Mexico 9.133
Rome
Tokyo
Mexico
9.292 1960
9.31 1964
9.24 1968