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⚽ Sports and games 🏅 The Olympics and athletics

Gymnastics

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.

🧩 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