Artistic Gymnastics - History

History

Gymnastics has been around for quite a while. The system was mentioned in works by ancient authors, such as Homer, Aristotle and Plato. It included many disciplines, which would later become separate sports: swimming, race, wrestling, boxing, riding, etc. and was also used for military training. In its present form gymnastics evolved in Germany and Bohemia in the beginning of the 19th century, and the term "artistic gymnastics" was introduced at the same time to distinguish free styles from the ones used by the military. A German educator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who was known as the father of gymnastics, invented several apparatus, including the horizontal bar and parallel bars which are used to this day. Two of the first gymnastics clubs were Turnvereins and Sokols.

In 1881 the International Gymnastics Federation was founded and remains the governing body of international gymnastics since then. It included only three countries and was called European Gymnastics Federation until 1921, when the first non-European countries joined the federation, and it was reorganized into its present form. Gymnastics was included into the program of the 1896 Summer Olympics, but women were allowed to participate in the Olympics only since 1928. World Championships, held since 1903 also remained for men only until 1934. Since that time two branches of artistic gymnastics have been developing—WAG and MAG—which, unlike men's and women's branches of many other sports, are much different in apparatus used at the major competitions, in techniques and concerns.