Vera Caslavska
Czechoslovakia
Artistic Gymnastics
Overall Ranks
#9 among Gymnasts
#3 among Female Gymnasts
#1 among Czechoslovakian Olympians
Olympic Results
1960
Team - Silver
1964
Individual All-Around - Gold
Team - Silver
Vault - Gold
Balance Beam - Gold
1968
Individual All-Around - Gold
Team - Silver
Floor Exercise - Gold
Vault - Gold
Uneven Bars - Gold
Balance Beam - Silver
Total
Events - 18
Gold - 7
Silver - 4
Vera Caslavska was born on May 3, 1942 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, which at the time was part of Nazi-controlled Bohemia and Moravia. She began figure skating at an early age, but switched to gymnastics as a teenager, making her international debut in 1958 at the world championships, where she won a team silver medal.
She was again part of the team for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, where the competition started with the team event. The Soviets had won the past two team golds, and they were able to continue that streak, beating the Czechoslovakians by 9 points, but it earned Caslavska her first Olympic medal, a silver.
The individual all-around event was decided based on the individual scores in the team event, and Caslavska was her country's highest scorer, finishing 8th overall in her Olympic debut at 18 years old. She qualified for just one event final, the balance beam, where she was the 6th qualifier, and didn't improve on her position in the final.
In the 1962 World Championships, she took the all-around silver, along with a gold in the vault and a bronze in the floor exercise, and she was definitely ascending. When she returned to the Olympics in Tokyo, she very nearly led her team to an upset of the Soviets for the gold medal, but they ended up less than a point behind in the end, taking another silver.
The individual all-around was again determined by scores in the team event, and this time, Caslavska came out on top, beating Larisa Latynina of the USSR, the two-time defending champion, by 0.566 points to take the gold medal. She also qualified for all 4 of the event finals.
She was the #3 qualifier in the floor exercise, but she had a poor routine in the final, scoring only 9.466, and she ended up falling to sixth place. She was the top qualifier in the vault, and was also the defending world champion, and she had the highest score in the final round to win the gold by 0.2 points, a significant margin in gymnastics.
She was the top qualifier in the uneven bars as well, but scored only an 8.7 in the final, which dropped her to 5th place and outside the medals. She was also the top qualifier in the balance beam, and she again had the highest score in the final, which earned her her third gold medal of the 1964 Games, to go along with the team silver.
In the 1966 World Championships, she won the vault title again, but also managed to win the individual all-around and the team gold, a huge upset in an era of Soviet dominance. Just prior to the 1968 Olympics, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, and she was forced into hiding due to her vocal opposition to the occupation, but she did manage to get permission to go to Mexico City for the Olympics.
At those Olympics, she once again attempted to break the Soviet stranglehold on the team event, but they again fell short, this time by only 0.65 points, but the result was the same, a third straight team Olympic silver. The individual all-around was still scored the same way, and Caslavska won in a blowout, 1.4 points ahead of anyone else, which was the largest win in this event until 2016, after the scoring system had been changed.
She again qualified for all 4 event finals. She was the #2 qualifier in the floor exercise, and after posting a 9.9 in the final, she won the gold medal. However, after she had won the event, the judges decided to adjust the qualifying round score of Larisa Petrik of the USSR, which gave her enough points to tie for the gold medal. She turned her head down and to the side during the Soviet national anthem, in protest of both the unfair scoring change and the occupation of her country.
The vault had always been her best event, and she showed it again in Mexico City, qualifying in first place, the posting a 9.9 in the final to take the gold medal by 0.15 points. She did the exact same thing in the uneven bars final, coming in as the top qualifier, scoring a 9.9 in the final, and winning the event by 0.15 points.
In the balance beam, she was unable to defend her gold medal, as she was #2 in qualifying, but matched the score of the Soviet gymnast ahead of her in the final, meaning that she was unable to make up the gap and ended up with the silver medal. It was the only individual event she didn't win in Mexico City, and she repeated her protest during the Soviet national anthem afterward.
After the Olympics, her government told her to withdraw her opposition to the Soviet occupation, but she refused, and was therefore banned from leaving the country, which forced her into retirement at her athletic peak. She spent the next 20 years as an outcast, before Soviet rule was finally overthrown in 1989, and she was finally recognized as a hero.
She was the second woman in history to win the individual all-around gold medal twice, after Latynina, a feat that has since been matched by Simone Biles. She won medals in all 6 events in the 1968 Olympics, all gold or silver, and led her team to three straight silver team medals, each time inching closer to winning. Who knows how much more she could have achieved if she had been allowed, but she accomplished more than enough in the time she had to prove herself as one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
