Artistic Gymnastics in 1896: Gymnastics at the first modern Olympics

Ten seconds of controlled flight, judged to a tenth of a point, after ten years of daily repetition. Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), founded in Liège in 1881 — the oldest international sports federation On the program at every modern Olympics since Athens 1896; women's events added in 1928

Six for men (floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, high bar); four for women (vault, uneven bars, beam, floor) 14 in total — eight for men, six for women Open-ended Code of Points since 2006: a difficulty score plus an execution score that starts at 10.00 Simone Biles — 41 Olympic and World Championship medals, 30 of them gold (through Paris 2024)

Artistic gymnastics asks a human being to leave the ground, rotate about two axes at once, and arrive standing still. Everything else — the apparatus, the chalk, the Code of Points — exists to measure how well that is done. Men contest six apparatus, women four, and each routine lasts between five seconds and ninety. Within those windows a gymnast must satisfy composition requirements, accumulate difficulty, and hide every trace of effort, because the execution panel deducts for bent knees, flexed feet, a hop on landing and a shoulder angle a few degrees off vertical. No sport compresses so much preparation into so little visible time.