Betty Okino's
Olympic Gymnastics Report

Betty Okino in competition.

Olympic medalist and actress Betty Okino is covering the gymnastics competition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics for SportsHollywood. Okino was a Bronze medalist with the U.S. Team in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, and brings her years of expertise and inside knowledge to the games. Only this time, not being on the team, she gets to have some fun and actually eat!

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Gymnastics is a perfect sport for the Olympic Games. Mixing strength and agility with style and grace, it's the sport where athletics meets aesthetics.

Gymnastics traces back to the ancient Olympic Games in Greece. The word itself comes from the Greek word gymnos, meaning naked — dress codes for athletes in those days were minimal, to say the least. Thankfully for the athletes that has changed, or photographs like this (right) would now be on every adult site on the Internet!

In fact, Christians of the time considered gymnastics Satanic because of its focus on the body — gymnasts performed in the nude at the all-male ancient Games of Olympia. After financial corruption led to the banning of gymnastics in 393 A.D. (Bad press? Financial corruption? Some things never change at the Olympics.)

The sport didn't reappear in the public arena until the 16th century, but didn't truly return as a competitive sport until the Olympics Games in Athens in 1896. Men from five countries competed in the horizontal bar, parallel bars, pommel horse, rings and vault. The 1928 Games in Amsterdam witnessed the debut of the first women's event, the team combined exercise, but U.S. women didn't compete until the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Only two members from the United States' 1996 gold-medal women's gymnastics team will compete in the Sydney Games: My friend, 1992 and 1996 Olympian Dominique Dawes, and 1996 Olympian Amy Chow are on the team, which was selected after four days of trials in Boston. Amazingly, Dominique had only trained seriously since May first, but now becomes America's first three-time Olympian in women's gymnastics since Muriel Davis.

For the Sydney 2000 Games, gymnastics features three disciplines: artistic, rhythmic and, for the first time, trampoline. Trampoline can be a grueling sport. (Picture Kerri Strug trying to do her routine on one of those things with a broken bone in her foot!) Jennifer Parilla was selected to compete in trampoline.

The gymnasts were ranked according to their weighted scores from the trials and the U.S. championships, but a selection committee headed by my old coach, Bela Karolyi, then picked the team:

Bela Karolyi, National Team Coordinator

And yes, they will all be wearing clothes.

You may be asking yourself what the womens' team is doing right now. A better question would be what are they not doing. Because they aren't eating, attending parties, or doing much of anything except preparing to compete.

My main memory of being on the U.S. Team in 1992 is of being stir-crazy and hungry. The Olympic Village was right off the beach with lots of stuff to do, but we weren't allowed to socialize with the other athletes while we were competing. I didn't even get to see the Opening Ceremonies! All seven of us lived in one apartment in the Olympic Village, and Bela's wife, Marta, lived downstairs. We weren't allowed to go anywhere without Marta with us. For meals, they picked our food and told us how much we could eat. We were starving the whole time. (The first thing we did afterward was to go out and gorge on pizza and ice cream.)

In fact, without seeing any of the spectacle surrounding the event, it seemed a lot like every other gymnastics competition to me . . . until after the competition, when I got to meet Michael Jordan and the other members of basketball's Dream Team. I was the tallest person on the women's team at 5'1", so you can imagine how our team posing with a bunch of seven-foot basketball players for photographers looked pretty ridiculous! But "Air Jordan" was a great guy, and when he heard I was from Illinois he even offered me floor seats for the Bulls games!

Left to right: Betty, Quincy Jones, Nastassja Kinski, and Kim Zmeskal. (Photo © Lori Lenagh)

That was exciting, but I still wasn't prepared for the notoriety we received when we returned home with the bronze team medal. The media scrutiny was intimidating, to say the least. (Fortunately, there are a couple of veterans on this year's squad who can prepare the other girls for all the attention they'll get when they finally return home.)

After the Olympics I retired from competitive gymnastics at the ripe old age of 17. Many people think it's all fun and games, but it isn't. It's not easy getting there, and it's not easy being there. But once you win a medal, it's all worth it.

Just three years after the Magnificent Seven won the United States' first women's Olympic all-around title, the Americans finished last in the medals round at the world championships. Hopefully having two gymnasts with some experience on the Olympic team will help them re-attain the elite status they finally achieved in Atlanta. I think they'll do well, and could possibly medal. We'll know in just a few weeks! The events run at the Sydney SuperDome from September 16 to October 1.

Let the (no) fun and games begin!!!

Okino Archive

Betty Okino 1990 U.S. National Championships: Silver Medalist (AA), Gold Medalist (Beam) and Event Finalist (5th Bars, 4th Floor) 1991 World Championships: Silver Medalist (Team), Bronze Medalist (Beam) and 4th AA 1991 American Cup: Champion and Gold Medalist (AA, Vault, Bars) 1992 World Championships: Silver Medalist (Bars) and Event Finalist (8th Beam) 1992 Olympics: Bronze Medalist (Team) and Event Finalist (6th Beam)