1984 Olympic Gymnastics

During the time of the 1984 summer Olympics in Los Angeles I was about to turn 11 years old. Gymnastics was my “thing.” I had studied dance earlier in my life and during the lessons we were also taught some gymnastics. So I was into it very early. I had all the prerequisite abilities for a gymnast – I was skinny and short and had dance training (which can make one look more elegant in routines) and flexibility. The sport came fairly naturally to me – at least at first. And I so wanted to be Mary Lou Retton! I so wanted to train with Bela Karolyi!

This is before I set eyes on the actual height of the uneven parallel bars. Haha.

My friend Mandi lived across the street from me and we would always put on our own version of gymnastics competitions. When the ’84 Olympics hit we reached new levels of fandom. As far as I remember we each had either leotards and/or swimsuits that matched the ’84 Olympic gymnastics teams leotards:

On our most ambitious days we would change into these outfits to get our day started. Then we’d head to my side yard. I lived on a corner and had a sidewalk running in a rectangle next to our house. This was close enough to a track to accommodate the running of the torch for the opening of our “Games.” I wish I was kidding!

Mandi was a Jehovah’s Witness and this was as much as her mother could stand of her being at my house, so we would head back to her house after this. She lived across the street, but the second house in, so her side yard was more isolated and perfect for performing Floor Exercise competitions. Not to mention they didn’t have a dog and we did, if you get my drift.

Our Vault was out front of her house. Ok, it was a tree stump. You laugh, but it worked!

The balance beam was drawn on the sidewalk in front of her house in chalk. I kid you not. At least we couldn’t fall off it. I know, how is it we never hurt ourselves? By the grace of God! I honestly don’t know how our parents could stand to have us doing such stupid stuff, either. My mother says she couldn’t stop me so she just didn’t look and prayed for the best. I guess it worked. You should know that neither of us ever mastered doing any backward maneuver, but we could both do mean handsprings, walkovers, flips – you name it and it was forward and we did it! By the way, the sidewalk balance beam is, I’m pretty sure, what has permanently messed up my knees. The pain started as early as high school.

What about the uneven parallel bars, I bet you’re asking. This apparatus was only performed on our most hearty of days, and never in the “uniform” because it involved walking 5-6 blocks to our elementary school. On the jungle gym there was a high bar (not really that high) that we would use for this purpose.

I can’t remember how exactly we determined scores and who actually medaled. I don’t have any recollection of this actually. I think we hardly ever got this far. We hardly ever did the bar routine part. But man did we have a blast! And we both wanted to play the part of Mary Lou Retton. I believe whomever wasn’t Mary Lou was usually Julianne McNamara. Ah… memories!

I’m pretty sure I was aware of Mary Lou Retton before the Olympics. The Amercan Cups, U.S. Nationals and of course, the Olympic Trials made sure of that. I can’t be sure, but I think my first vivid memory of Ms. Retton was at the Trials. She was getting ready to go on the uneven bars and was chalking her hands. She was smiling and the commentator said something like, “remember that smile – you’ll be seeing a lot more of this girl very soon.”

That always stuck with me.

Mary Lou won 5 medals during the 1984 Olympics: Bronze on Floor and Bars, Silver on Vault and Team competitions, and of course the All-Around gold. During the all-arounds she was in very close competition with Romanian Ecaterina Szabo (all of the Soviet bloc nations boycotted these Olympics except Romania and Yugoslavia). It was so, so exciting to watch! After Bars and Beam Mary Lou was behind, but went on to score perfect tens on both floor and vault and won the all-around competition. I’ll never forget her jumping into Bela’s arms after the vault! It was so exciting!

I don’t want to forget to mention the “Retton flip” for the uneven bars – her own invention:

And I don’t want to marginalize the other team members. They were all our heros! Especially Julianne McNamara and Kathy Johnson. Julianne:

I tried to find a clip of Julianne’s appearance on Charles In Charge, but alas, no. (

Kathy Johnson:

And then there was the men’s team that year – Mitch Gaylord, Bart Conner, Tim Daggett. More sheer excellence!

And I won’t put the vid here, but if you missed it go find Kerry Strug’s vault from the 1996 olympics. That’s what it’s all about, kids!

If you can’t tell, I’m excited for Olympic Gymnastics to start in a few days! Go Team USA!