In an atmosphere redolent of honest sweat 180 palm-powdered athletes, clothed in bathing trunks, tennis flannels, track shorts and acrobats' tights, flipped around the gymnasium of Manhattan's West Side Y.M.C.A. like desperate fish. They were top-rung U.S. gymnasts competing in one of the oldest and least publicized of national tournaments: the 58th annual amateur U.S. gymnastic championships.
Modern apparatus gymnastics was founded in the early 19th Century by Germany's Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. To this day the world's gymnasts follow the etiquette as well as the exercises established on his Turnplatz. They approach their...
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