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Olga Korbut

Olympiahalle München, Spiridon-Louis-Ring 21, Munich, Germany

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Olga Korbut's performance at the 1972 Munich Olympics is widely credited with single-handedly popularizing gymnastics as a global television spectacle, her expressive, emotional competing style and daring, then-unprecedented release moves on the uneven bars captivating an international audience that had never watched the sport so closely before. She won three gold medals in Munich, including the team and balance beam titles, but it was a stumble on the uneven bars during the all-around final — and her visibly tearful reaction in front of the cameras — that made her a global sympathetic figure, arguably more famous in the moment than gymnasts who'd actually won more medals. Korbut's signature move, a backward somersault on the uneven bars that came to be called the "Korbut Flip," was considered so dangerous that it was later banned from competition, but not before it had inspired a generation of young gymnasts and coaches to push the sport's acrobatic difficulty well beyond where it had been before her. Nicknamed "the Sparrow from Minsk," Korbut added two more medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics before retiring, and her Munich performance is still credited by gymnastics historians as the single moment that transformed the sport from a niche Olympic event into mainstream television programming.

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