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At the 1980 Summer Olympics, fourteen different artistic gymnastics events were contested, eight for men and six for women. All events were held at the Sports Palace of the Central Lenin Stadium in Moscow from July 20 through 25th. Several teams who had qualified to compete were absent as a result of the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott, including the United States, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, and West Germany.
Contents
For the first time in Olympic competition, in event finals for the vault an average of two vaults was used as the final score, rather than the best of two vaults.
Format of competition
The gymnastics competition at the 1980 Summer Olympics was carried out in three stages:
Each country was limited to three gymnasts in the all-around final and two gymnasts in each apparatus final.
Women's events
The Soviet women's gymnastics team finished the 1980 Summer Olympics with 8 medals, the same as in Montreal but less than they had won at any previous Olympics. In percentage terms they won 38% of the medals awarded, less than at any previous Olympics. The USSR won only 1 AA medal. In each Olympics before that they had always won 2 and 1960 Summer Olympics had won all 3. At Olomouc 84 and 1988 Summer Olympics they would win 2 again. The Soviet team won the team gold medal by 1.4 points. They had won team gold in Montreal by 3.2 points. In bars event final 5 of the 6 gymnasts won medals (2 Romanians, 2 East Germans, 1 Soviet). The unlucky gymnast by 0.05 was a Soviet.
Romania won 7 medals, the same number as they had won in Montreal. For the first time ever at the Olympics a Romanian gymnast medals on each piece of apparatus in event finals. They won 2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze in event finals - only 1 bronze less than the USSR. Of the 7 perfect scores awarded at the 1980 Summer Olympics, 4 went to Romanian gymnasts, 2 to Soviet gymnasts and 1 to an East German gymnast. At Montreal in 1976 between the team competition and AA finals Nadia Comăneci was deducted 1.2 points from her start values. In Moscow 1980 she was also deducted 1.2 points. Or to put it another way - for the 11 routines Comaneci was deducted 1.2 in Montreal she was deducted 0.7 in Moscow (omitting her team optional bars score where she fell).