Sampo Rhythmic Gymnastics Club

When people hear the word gymnastics, they automatically think of daring flips on the balance beam or impossible maneuvers on the uneven bars. However, there exists a different kind of gymnastics altogether known as Rhythmic Gymnastics.

Rhythmic Gymnastics is a sport where girls can develop total body fitness, including strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. It builds hand-eye coordination skill and further develops the gymnast's confidence. This sport combines the grace of ballet, the athleticism of gymnastics and the creative movement of dance while working with various apparatus such as ribbons, balls, hoops, ropes, scarves, and clubs, in time with music. Each movement interprets the music by following the rhythm and is choreographed according to several requirements of difficulties and patterns. It's somewhat like the floor routines in artistic gymnastics without the many flips and includes dancing, leaps, rolls and throws with apparatus.

Gymnastics, rhythmic and artistic combined, started in the Swedish system of free exercise during the 1800's as one sport and gradually developed into two different sports. Around 1900, the Swedish school of rhythmic gymnastics added more dance elements from Finland, thus establishing a degree of difficulty for each movement. Rhythmic Gymnastics started as an independent competitive sport in the 1950's by the Russian's. Although Rhythmic Gymnastics was introduced to North America in 1906 by a Finnish-Canadian athletic club in Toronto, the sport didn't gain much popularity until the 1960's.

Previously known as "Modern Rhythmic Gymnastics" and "Rhythmic Sportive Gymnastics", Rhythmic Gymnastics was recognized as an international sport by the Federation of International Gymnastics (F.I.G.) in June 1962. The first world championships were held in 1963 in Budapest, Hungary, and have since been held every year in various locations throughout the world. The sport was introduced as an Olympic discipline at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and the first Gold Metal was won by Canada's Lori Fung.

Today, rhythmic gymnasts are highly trained and show remarkable combination of flexibility, coordination and imaginative dance. The sport is more popular in European countries and less known in North America due to its slow beginnings in the latter.

Group competition was finally introduced in the Olympics as a demonstration sport in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and it will be an official Olympic Sport for the first time in Sydney Australia in the year 2000.

Note: Pictures courtesy of the Italian Rhythmic Web and Alex Kochann RSG site.