Artistic Gymnastics at the 1928 Summer Olympics

The 1928 Olympic gymnastics program consisted of seven events for men, with an individual and team all-around and five apparatus events. In addition, women made their first competitive Olympic appearance (they had done exhibitions in the past), but in retrospect, it was a bittersweet début. Fully half of the winning Dutch women’s team was Jewish, including their coach and the alternate competitor. By the end of World War II, all but one of the Jewish Dutch team members (Elka de Levie) would lose their lives, along with their children, in Nazi gas chambers.

As was common through 1936, the gymnastics events were contested outdoors, in the Olympisch Stadion in Amsterdam. Swiss male gymnasts dominated, winning five of the seven events, and nine medals overall, led by Georges Miez, who won the individual all-around, was on the winning team, and also won gold on the horizontal bar.