Old-school favourite bar routines

It's odd to look at bar routines where gymnasts are doing skills impossible these days, and with no giants. Incredible releases were still present, and interesting transitions were the order of the day, as well as fabulously original dismounts, especially off the low bar- never seen today! The margin for error in some moves was massive, and very painful- belly beats were very brusing if misjudged even slightly. Routines known for one spectacular release will be included as the rest of the routine was also very impressive and exciting to watch.

 The most famous of all, Olga also had, apart from her flip, very dairing transitions and a perfect dismount but was never rewarded for her excellence, due to the dissaproval of her 'circus tricks'.

Elena Mukhina, who would have won the 1980 all-around due to her brilliance on all events upped the ante with the full-twisting Korbut. Her difficulty was astounding.

This includes both routines. Nadia's form was absolute perfection here, but her releases and transitions were also very difficult, if not as creative as some other routines of her era.

Teodora was underscored compared to Nadia, as well as being totally overshadowed by her. A wonderful gymnast in her own right, she excelled on bars and her routine is the most exciting to watch by far. She deserved 10's on bars.

Ma WAS the Queen of uneven bars, and deserved to beat MacNamara outright every time. Beautiful form and my favourite bars dismount, just incredible.

Emilia is another true great of the bars. She always looked so sad and thin, which helped to corroborate her later assertions that the Karolyi's were abusive. She is known more for that and for her ecletic floor choreopgraphy more than for her spectacular and exciting bars, which is such a shame because they deserve just as much recognition as Nadia's did. Amazing.

My all-time favourite uneven bar worker is Teodora. Others I enjoy but didn't put up here are Maxi Gnauck, Steffi Kraker, Karin Janz and Gabriela Fahnrich. I wish bars were creative again, instead of the tired old..geinger..tkactchev..pak salto..ono..double layout. It gets so boring. Would love to see someone crack out a Ma dismount, it's still rated an F whereas the other dismounts here are too easy to do.