Vitali Shcherba
Belarus
Artistic Gymnastics
Overall Ranks
#8 among Gymnasts
#6 among Male Gymnasts
#1 among Belarusian Olympians
Olympic Results
1992
Individual All-Around - Gold
Team - Gold
Vault - Gold
Parallel Bars - Gold
Rings - Gold
Pommel Horse - Gold
1996
Individual All-Around - Bronze
Vault - Bronze
Parallel Bars - Bronze
Horizontal Bar - Bronze
Total
Events - 16
Gold - 6
Bronze - 4
Vitali Veniadziktavich Shcherba (also spelled Scherbo) was born on January 13, 1972 in Minsk, USSR, now part of Belarus. He was trained in the Soviet gymnastic schools as a child, and made his international debut when he was 19 years old at the World Championships, where he won all-around silver, plus 2 more individual silvers and a bronze to go along with team gold.
By the next year, the Soviet Union no longer existed, but he was selected to be part of the Unified Team that represented the former Soviet Union in Barcelona. In the team event, the Unified Team had the highest overall score in all 6 apparatus, and they easily won the gold medal by just more than 5 points over China, giving Shcherba his first gold medal.
Shcherba was the top qualifier in the individual all-around based on his scores from the team event, with the highest score on 4 apparatus. Those scores no longer counted toward the individual all-around, just qualifying, but he had the best score on 3 apparatus in the final, which enabled him to beat his Ukrainian teammate, Hryhoriy Misiutin, for the gold medal by 0.1 points, reversing their places from the previous world championship.
The top 8 on each apparatus in the team event advanced to the individual event finals, with a maximum of 2 per country, and Shcherba qualified for 5 of the 6 event finals, only missing out on the horizontal bar. Previously, final scores were the average of the qualifying and the final performance, but by this point, that had been changed to only count the final performance toward the medal.
He was the top qualifier in the floor exercise, but on his final pass in his final performance, he stepped out of bounds, and the deduction landed him in 6th place, causing him to miss out on a medal. In the vault, he was the #2 qualifier behind Misiutin, and the final score was determined by the average of 2 vaults in the final. Shcherba had the 2 best vaults of the final, and won the gold medal over Misiutin by 0.75 points, which is a pretty large margin for an individual event.
Shcherba was the top qualifier on the parallel bars, but the favorite was Li Jing of China, who was the two-time world champion, but on his dismount, Li took a step, while Shcherba was able to nail his, scoring a 9.9 to pull off the upset and win his 4th gold medal in Barcelona. He was also the top qualifier on the rings, and after a 9.937 in the final, he took another gold medal, also over Li, this one by 0.62 points.
Shcherba was also the top qualifier in the pommel horse, along with teammate Valery Belenky, but Belenky faltered in the final, and Shcherba posted a 9.925, which ended up tying for the top score in the final with Pae Gil-Su of North Korea, so the two shared the gold medal, with no silver awarded. It was Shcherba's sixth gold medal of the games, and he is still the only gymnast ever to win 6 golds at a single Olympics.
After the Olympics, Shcherba moved to the United State, settling in State College, Pennsylvania, but at that point began competing for his homeland of Belarus, newly independent after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He won 8 gold medals at the World Championships over the next 3 years, including all-around gold in 1993, but he took bronze and silver in the all-around the next two years. He was still an easy choice to represent Belarus in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
In the 1996 team event, the former Soviet republics had most of the best teams, with Russia taking the gold medal, China repeating as silver medalist, and Ukraine coming in bronze. Belarus, despite being much smaller, still managed a 4th place finish, and came in just 0.16 points behind Ukraine for the bronze medal.
Shcherba was the #2 overall qualifier for the individual all-around, thanks to 4 scores among the top 4 in an apparatus. He ended up matching those placements almost exactly in the final, but Li Xiaoshuang of China finished among the top 7 in every apparatus, and moved ahead of everyone else for the gold, and Shcherba ended up winning the bronze medal.
He qualified for 4 of the event finals, all but the rings and the pommel horse, both of which he had won at the last Olympics. He was the number 2 qualifier in the floor exercise, but again had a big mistake in his final routine, and ended up finishing in 7th place. He qualified 4th in the vault, but had won the last gold and 2 recent world championships, so he was a threat to medal. In the final, he had two very good vaults, but was only able to finish in third place, winning another bronze medal.
He was also 4th in qualifying in the parallel bars, but was the defending Olympic and world champion in the event. He received a 9.8 for his final routine, but two others beat that score, and he ended up winning his third bronze. He was the #2 qualifier in the horizontal bar, and again scored a 9.8 in the final, which was again good enough for just a bronze medal.
In 1997, he broke his hand in a motorcycle accident, and retired soon afterward. 20 years later, Tatiana Gutsu, who had been his teammate on the Unified Team in 1992 and had won the women's all-around, accused him of raping her when they were training together in 1991, when he was 19 and she was 15. He has denied the allegations, and no charges were ever filed.
Shcherba's performance at the 1992 Olympics alone would be enough to put him on this list, as the only gymnast ever to win 6 gold medals at the same Olympics, but coming back to win 4 bronzes in 1996, including one in the all-around, helped move him much higher on the list of the greatest Olympians of all time.
