“Elegant.” “Beautiful.” “Unabashedly girly.” For a long time, I struggled to put my finger on exactly what it was that bothered me about many descriptions of my sport. I agree and appreciate that it is beautiful. Yet even relatively positive descriptions of rhythmic in the media haven’t, in my opinion, explained what...
Could Tokyo 2020 be to rhythmic gymnastics what Beijing 2008 was to artistic? And other commentary on rhythmic gymnastics at the most recent Olympic Games Just as artistic gymnastics entered a new era after the FIG said goodbye to the “perfect 10” in 2006, rhythmic gymnastics is experiencing the initial effects of a...
American sports media hardly covers rhythmic gymnastics aside from some non-primetime space during the Olympics—during which commentators refer vaguely to “grace” and “beauty” far more often than they attempt to explain the rules. As a certified rhythmic gymnastics judge, I can assure you that these rules are...
In the one other personal essay I’ve written about rhythmic gymnastics, I remembered that when I arrived at college after retiring as an athlete, I liked the anonymity that I thought would come from leaving my sport behind. “I’d been ‘the rhythmic gymnast’ since elementary school,” I wrote, “and I felt...