⚽ Sports and games 🏅 The Olympics and athletics
Gymnastics

📖 In short
Gymnastics is a beautiful sport where gymnasts perform amazing acrobatic moves: cartwheels, spins, jumps and balances, on special apparatus or on the floor. It needs strength, flexibility, courage and lots of training.
🤩 Did you know?
- The balance beam is only 10 centimeters wide.
- The rings hang 250 centimeters high.
- Rhythmic gymnastics joined the Olympic Games in 1984.
- Many gymnasts start training when they're very young.
🔎 Find out more
🌟 Gymnastics apparatus
Gymnastics apparatus includes the narrow balance beam, parallel bars, the high bar, hanging rings, the vault, and the floor mat where routines are performed to music.
🔍 Judges and points
Judges watch the gymnast carefully and give points for how difficult, beautiful and well done the moves are, and whether they land steadily without wobbling.
💡 Rhythmic gymnastics
In rhythmic gymnastics, gymnasts perform dance-like moves to music using equipment like a long ribbon, a ball, a hoop and clubs.
🎯 Start safely
Gymnastics strengthens the whole body, but it must be learned with a specialist coach, on soft mats, after a good warm-up, to avoid injuries.
📸 More pictures
🧩 Test yourself
1 How wide is the balance beam?
2 Which equipment is used in rhythmic gymnastics?
3 The balance beam is only ?? centimeters wide.
4 Which picture shows “Gymnastics”?
⚽ Discover more
📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons
- Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil · CC BY 2.0
- Pierre-Yves Beaudouin · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Astro medya Org. Ltd. ŞTİ. · CC BY 2.0

