Artistic Gymnastics: Artistic gymnastics is the Olympic sport for men and women performed on apparatus and judged individually, by event, in the All-Around and by team. Men’s events are floor exercise, horizontal bar, parallel bars, pommel horse, still rings and vault. Women’s events are vault, uneven parallel bars balance beam and floor exercise.
While the term gymnastics is used to refer to a number of related sports, like rhythmic gymnastics, artistic gymnastics is what most people are referring to when they say or talk about gymnastics. It is often the most popular spectator sport at the Summer Olympic Games., and in numerous other competitive environments.
Artistic gymnasts perform short routines mostly lasting approximately 45 to 90 seconds on different gymnastics equipment, and only a few seconds (4 – 5 seconds) per vault. Artistic gymnastics is governed by the F.I.G. (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique). The F.I.G. governs and regulates the sport through the Code of Points and manages all official international elite competitions. The F.I.G. designates and assigns national federations, like USA Gymnastics in the United States, to manage gymnastics in individual countries.
