Bart Conner

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Bart Conner medal table

Gymnast

United StatesUnited States United States
Olympic Summer Games
gold 1984 Los Angeles Ingots
gold 1984 Los Angeles Team all-around
World championships
gold 1979 Fort Worth Ingots
bronze 1979 Fort Worth Leap
bronze 1979 Fort Worth Team all-around

Bart Conner (* 28. March 1958 in Chicago , Illinois ) is a former American gymnast and two-time Olympic champion .

Conner started doing gymnastics at the age of 10. His first significant success was the AAU title in 1972. Immediately after graduating from high school , he accompanied the US delegation as the youngest member to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal . He was then 18 years old and took part in all eight gymnastics competitions. However, he only managed to advance to the top eight with the US gymnastics team.

Conner then began his studies at the University of Oklahoma , which was led with his gymnastics team in the national rankings of the NCAA in 19th place. In 1979 at the World Gymnastics Championships in Fort Worth , he became world champion on parallel bars with a new movement known as the Conner Spin . The athlete performs a complete 360-degree turn on a bar in a spread position and then presses himself into the handstand.

Conner was the first to qualify for the gymnastics delegation for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow and did not support the US boycott of the Games. He described the boycott in various media appearances as pointless and protested against the fact that the Olympic Games are being misused for political purposes. However, since he had to recover from an injury sustained in the preliminary rounds, a successful result would have been unlikely. Since he continued to exercise even after the injury, recovery took over a year.

He eventually sustained another left bicep injury at the 1983 Chunichi Cup . After an operation and intensive therapy, he was able to qualify for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles . He again took part in all eight competitions in apparatus gymnastics. His consistently good scores helped the US team to win their first gold medal in the team all-around competition. In the individual all-around he came in sixth final rank with a total number of points that was only 0.35 points below that of the Olympic champion Kōji Gushiken . In floor exercise and on parallel bars, he was also able to qualify for the finals. On parallel bars he became Olympic champion with a perfect score of 10.0 and on the floor he came in fifth.

Conner married the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci on April 27, 1996 in Bucharest . The couple met at the 1976 American Cup , which they both won. They own the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy , several sports stores, and are the editor of International Gymnast magazine . They are both heavily involved in charity work as well. The couple has a son (* 2006) and lives in Oklahoma .

In 1997 Conner was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame . He appeared in two gymnastics films in 2006, Rebel in Sneakers and Peaceful Warrior .

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personal data
SURNAME Conner, Bart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American gymnast
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois