Gym Shorts

In gymnastics, innovation and injury sometimes go together. That is the case with a new move that most women will be performing in Seoul. At the 1983 world championships in Budapest, Soviet Natalia Yurchenko opened the new era when she successfully debuted the round-off vault, now called the Yurchenko. The easily recognized approach entails a cartwheel onto the springboard in front of the vaulting horse, followed by a launch backward onto the horse.

Rare in the Los Angeles Games (neither Mary Lou Retton nor her Rumanian counterparts did one), the Yurchenko is now commonplace. International Gymnastics Federation President Yuri Titov calls the vault "a great change" but notes that the equipment may have to be redesigned for safety. "The apparatus for vaulting must be a bit wider for the boys and longer for the girls."

Men will be forbidden to perform the move at the Games because they vault onto a horse set vertically out from the launching board, making it a narrower and more dangerous target than the women's horse, which is set horizontally. But the Yurchenko is still highly risky for the women. While warming up at the Tokyo World Sports Fair in May, American Julissa Gomez bounced badly off the springboard and hit her head against the horse. Instantly paralyzed, she later lapsed into a coma in a Tokyo hospital. She is now in Houston, and it is unknown whether she will ever regain consciousness.