Parenting & Family Quote by Olga Korbut

Korbut is wrestling, in real time, with the central unfairness of her sport: gymnastics sells “youth” as both an aesthetic and a competitive advantage, then acts surprised when bodies and careers break under the weight of it. Her phrasing is rough, almost offhand, but the meaning cuts cleanly. “We lost a lot” isn’t just about medals; it’s about what gets sacrificed when the scoring system rewards prepubescent lightness, flexibility, and fearlessness over adult strength, durability, and expression.

The line “kids can do it more than adult” lands like a grim technical note. Children can absorb repetitive pounding, contort into extreme shapes, and take risks with fewer immediate consequences. Adults - and she emphasizes “a woman and adult woman” - carry biology, injury history, and, crucially, the capacity for interpretation. That last claim is the subtextual pivot: older gymnasts can “show more,” meaning artistry, nuance, and emotional storytelling, the very qualities the sport claims to value while structurally sidelining the athletes most capable of delivering them.

Korbut’s context matters. She became a global icon in the 1972 Olympics, when the “pixie” gymnast image exploded: tiny, daring, made-for-TV. Her own fame helped build the modern spectacle, but her critique reads like a reckoning with what that spectacle incentivized. When she predicts a future of separating ages, she’s arguing for a sport that stops laundering exploitation as difficulty and starts treating maturity not as a handicap, but as a different, legitimate form of excellence.