Gymnastics Skills Named after Armenian Athletes

Armenia’s first woman representative, Houry Gebeshyan’s new skill at the 31st Summer Olympic Games has officially been named after her.

During the parallel bars exercise, she pushed herself from the first bar and rotated 360 degrees to catch the second one at the 31st Summer Olympic Games.

It should be noted, that it is not the first time Armenian gymnasts surprise by the complexity of their tricks. During the World Cup in Doha, Qatar, in 2014 a member of the Armenian national team Vahagn Davtyan managed to perform a variation of the Cross exercise on the still rings that had not been done before. The element was named after the Armenian sportsman and called the Davtyan Cross. 

Before that, element on the pommel horse was called Vahagn Stepanyan. The success of the Armenian sportsmen in gymnastics and the tradition of naming skills after them began with gymnast Hrant Shahinyan. Shahinyan, who won two gold medals and two silver medals in gymnastics at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, is the first Armenian in modern Olympic history to win an Olympic medal. Shahinyan performed an element on the pommel horse, later called “turntable Shahinyan”.

In 1954 another Soviet Armenian gymnast Albert Azaryan was the first person to do one of the ring’s most famous variations of the Iron Cross called the Azaryan Cross, which incorporates a quarter turn to the side.  In 1981 the element on the vault was called by Artur Hakopyan’s name. He is credited as the first athlete to do a Tsukahara double twist.

Source: armedia.am