Being so involved with our USA men, I was not able to concentrate o n th e other foreign gymnasts. But from the looks of things, Li Ning, Tong Fei, Korolev, and Makuts seemed to be battling out for the top ho nors, with Li Ning pulling ahead towards the last two events. I recall seeing Li Yuejiu 's floor exercise, which was perfect until the landing of his full -in dismount. A slight bobble cost him the p erfect 10. His 9.85 was third for the Chinese. Li Ning and Tong Fei both scored 9.90! How amazing, the defending world champion failing to make the finals! This is an indication of the level of the competition. I recaU seeing a lot of great performances from Korolev and Makuts. Korolev dismounted with a full-in on flo or exercise. He also improved his difficulty on pommel horse and horizontal bar, where he did two consecutive reverse hec hts. Makuts' one-quarter Diamidov to an immediate Healy twist on the parallel bars was innovative. The gymnast who seemed to steal the show, however, was the fabulous Li Ning, Li Ning's scores pre tty well sum up th e utter mastery of this nineteen year old king of men's gymnastics: 9.90, 9.90, 9.85 , 9.90 , 9.90, and 10.0QI To tal, 59.45! Tong Fei 's 59.10 seemed prosaic. Korolev's 59.00 was the closest that any Russian could get. This year's World Cup was probably the very best gymnastic competition in the history of the sport. The finals were exciting. Li Ning captured five gold medals and one bronze medal! Tong Fei won most of the other medals. The Chinese domination by these two me n was "devastating." Korolev won the only other gold medal o n parallel bars. Jim narrowly missed getting a bronze on the vaulting. The highlight for the USA men was the electrifying horizontal performance by Peter. His 9.95 captured a well deserved bronze medal, that may well serve as a portent for the USA men's team in next year's World Championship in Budapest, Hungary. USA 's Peter Vidmar
USA '.s Bart Conner
WOMEN'S REPORT Without a doubt this World Cup was o ne of the nicest meets that I have ever been a p art of. We all stayed at a new hotel called the Inter-Continental which gave us the opportunity to get to know the other gymnasts and helped expand our frie ndships. We spent a lot of time, as we usually do, with the team from China, and got to know the team from Bulgaria much b etter ; Grancharova had a sprained ankle that Jack Rockwell (USA Trainer) was taking care of her, and their o th er gymnasts also had some minor things that Jack was helping w ith. One evening our gang helped Olga Bicherova to celebrate her birthday. I will always cherish the m e mories that I have from World Cup. The competition was an extremely high level one with many international m edalists in the meet. Maxi Gnauck did a very fine job. We were all concern ed as to whether Maxi would be able to come back to the high level that she had attained (at World Championship in Moscow where she won three gold medals), after having surgery earlier in the year on her ankle. I think everybody wou ld agree that Maxi is on her way back Bicherova has improved very much since we had seen h e r in Florida at the USSR/USA meet last spring. Anybody who wondered at the World Championships how Olga had b ecome World Champion, I don 't think one w ould wonder any more after seeing how she has progressed and how well she performed. Also from Russia, was Natalia Yurchenko who had competed in Fort Worth at the USGF Internatio nal Invitational. At which time she did not compete at the level she competed here at the World Cup. She is 17 years old, almost 18. A lovely girl and a lovely gymnast , sup er bars and, of course, everybody is excited about her vaulti ng. She was the first international gymnast that we had seen who competed the round-off lay-out and the round-off lay-out Tsuk, w hic h she does extraordinarily w ell. The Russians have a real find in this girl. I think she has probably bee n around for quite a while and is really coming to the forefront right now. The o nly bad part abo ut this competition was the difficulty that we had with the m eet o rganizers concerning Yurchenko because according to the rules that we knew about, a girl was to have participated in the World Championships to be eligible for World Cup. We had c hecked o urselves to see if other up and coming girls would be allowed to p articipate, and were told no. Everyone was surprised when we go t the re and found that Yurchenko had received p ermission to p erform. It left a bad fee ling not just with the United States but w ith many other countries. 22
USGF GYMNASTICS NOV.fDEC. '82