Olga Korbut was the Belarusian-born gymnast who won Olympic gold in both the floor exercise and balance beam at the 1972 Munich Games.
Korbut competed for the Soviet Union and became one of the most recognizable athletes of the 1972 Olympics. Her energetic, daring routines helped transform women’s gymnastics from a primarily elegant discipline into a more acrobatic and dynamic sport. She also won team gold and an individual silver on uneven bars in Munich.
Her balance-beam performance was especially influential because it included difficult skills that were unusual for women’s gymnastics at the time. The “Korbut flip,” a backward salto from the high bar, was later banned from competition because of safety and judging concerns. Korbut won another team gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
A common mix-up is nationality: Korbut was born in Grodno, then part of the Byelorussian SSR, but represented the Soviet Union internationally. Her Olympic medals therefore appear in Soviet, not Belarusian, team records.