Individual All-Around, Women

Věra Čáslavská was the dominant gymnast, male or female, in Mexico City, winning medals in all six women’s events and four gold medals, including the individual all-around. She came to the Mexico City Olympics as the favorite, having won the 1966 World Championships, although Soviet Nataliya Kuchinskaya was close at the 1966 Worlds in Dortmund, Germany. In Mexico City, it was not close, as Čáslavská won easily over Kuchinskaya’s teammate, Zinaida Voronina, the wife of Mikhail Voronin, who was also second in the men’s all-around in 1968. Kuchinskaya won the bronze medal. To top things off for her, at the end of the 1968 Olympics, Čáslavská got married after the competition ended, marrying Josef Odložil, who won a silver medal in Mexico in the 1,500 metre run.

However, Čáslavská almost did not compete at the 1968 Olympics. In April 1968 she had signed the “Manifesto of 2000 Words,” which opposed Soviet involvement in Czechoslovakia. In August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Prague to put down Czechoslovak protests. Čáslavská was warned she could be arrested and fled to the mountains, where she trained on her own in the fields and forests. She was eventually allowed to compete at the Olympics, but the Soviets did not forget. She never was able to obtain a coaching job in Czechoslovakia, and remained unemployed. She was told to renounce her support of the manifesto, but continually refused. She later coached the Mexican team from 1979-81 but on her return to Czechoslovakia, the restrictions on her were kept in place. After the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, Čáslavská’s brave support of her principles became an asset, and she eventually became President of the Czech Olympic Committee and a member of the IOC.

Life was not much better for Zinaida Voronina, though for far less noble reasons. She and her husband won 10 gymnastics medals in Mexico City, but Zinaida later turned to alcohol abuse, her husband divorced her, she lost custody of her son, and she was only able to obtain work as a manual laborer, a job she also lost because of her alcoholism. Voronina eventually died in 2001, when only 53-years-old, due to alcohol-related causes.