Making meaning of the 1970s east-west gymnastics tours: Diplomacy, d tente, and professionalising women's artistic gymnastics

What the paper says

Following the success and popularity of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, the Soviet Union and Romania sent teams to tour the United States and Australia throughout the 1970s a form of cultural diplomacy that contributed to d tente in the Cold War. Through exploration of media representations and archival documentation, this article aims to explain the significance of these tours in the context of Cold War Olympic sport. First, it is argued that the Eastern bloc governments used gymnasts to advertise their regimes' successes. Second, media portrayals westernised gymnasts to reconcile their celebrity status with their origins in enemy territory. In the case of the Soviets, a high-profile meeting at the White House added diplomatic meaning to gymnastic tours. Although cultural and political issues were of little interest to the media when the gymnasts came to Australia, archival documents reveal the tour's troubling implications for amateur athletes in the increasingly professional Olympic movement