Olga Korbut

Olga Valentinovna Korbut is a Belorussian retired Gymnast. She competed in the summer Olympics in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team. She was born on May the 16 in 1955. She has won four gold medals and two silvers medals.

Olga  was born in Grodno. She started training at 8 yrs of age and entered an belarusian sports school headed by coach Renald Knysh, when she was 9 yrs old. There, Olga’s first coach was Elena Vochetskaya,a gold medalist but she was moved to Renald’s group a year later. With him, she learnt an difficult backward somersault on the balance beam.

She launched the move at this competition in  USSR in 1969. In the same year, Olga completed a backflip to catch on the uneven bars, this was the the first backward release move ever performed by a woman on bars. The next day, Olga did the same routine in the event finals. The judge’s score altogether was 9.8, the audience were booing the score because they thought she deserved an 10 but the judges refused to change her score.

The backward release move got named after Olga, the Korbut flip also the Korbut  was banned from gymnastics.The Korbut flip was banned because it was too risky for anyone to do it. That was why they banned the flip.