Coomera Indoor Sports - Centre (CSC) Artistic

Sport History

Gymnastics – Artistic

Origins and the sport today:

Dating back to the ancient , Friedrich Ludwig JAHN (GER) formulated the first set of rules for group- based exercise in the early 19th century. Today, the sport is governed by the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG).

Artistic gymnastics was part of the first Olympics of the modern era in Athens in 1896, while the first FIG Gymnastics World Championship took place in Antwerp in 1903. Today, the 148 affiliated federations worldwide have a combined members total estimated at about 50 million, with almost 6000 licensed to compete at the elite level.

The sport took on a much higher profile when Nadia COMANECI (ROU) and (URS) scored perfect scores of 10 at the 1976 Olympics. Judging has also evolved, with judges separated into D (difficulty) and E (execution) panels in order to mark the content and quality of each display – a panel of reference judges (RJS) is also on hand.

Artistic gymnastics at the :

Artistic gymnastics is an optional sport at the Commonwealth Games, meaning it is up to the host federation to decide whether it should be on the program.

Artistic gymnastics has been part of the Commonwealth Games since Edmonton 1978, although it was not at the Brisbane 1982 and Edinburgh 1986 Games.

In the all-around discipline, (ENG) is the defending Commonwealth Games men’s champion, along with his English compatriots in the team event.

Both men’s and women’s events consist of team and individual all-around competitions. The apparatus finals are as follows: Men – exercise, , , , and . Women – floor exercise, , and vault.

Artistic gymnastics in :

The national governing body for gymnastics in Australia (Gymnastics Australia) was established in 1949 and has more than 156,000 registered members, following 13 years of athlete membership growth.

Ashleigh BRENNAN was part of the Australian team that won Commonwealth Games gold in both 2006 and Delhi 2010. She also achieved a silver in the floor exercise in 2006 and bronze in the floor exercise in 2010.

Daria JOURA is another female Australian gymnast who was a triple senior all-around champion and competed at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

For the men, Joshua JEFFERIS was a parallel bars and rings specialist who won gold at the Melbourne in the all-around event, gold in the rings and silver in the team competition. At the Delhi , he helped Australia win their first gold in the men’s team event, took individual gold on parallel bars, and bronze in the all-around event.