Gymnastics at the 1948 Summer Olympics

Gymnastics at the Games of the XIV Olympiad
Venue	Empress Hall

At the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, nine events in gymnastics were contested. Finland led all nations with six gold medals and ten medals overall.

Shortly after the Czechoslovak team arrived in London, 22 year old team member Eliška Misáková was taken ill and confined to an iron lung. She died of infantile paralysis on the same day that her teammates competed. When the Czechoslovak flag was raised at the medal ceremony, it was bordered with a black ribbon.

Medal table

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Finland (FIN)	6	2	2	10
2	Switzerland (SUI)	3	4	2	9
3	Hungary (HUN)	1	2	3	6
4	Czechoslovakia (TCH)	1	0	3	4
5	United States (USA)	0	0	1	1
Totals (5 entries)		11	8	11	30

Men's events

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze
individual all-round	Veikko Huhtanen  Finland	Walter Lehmann  Switzerland	Paavo Aaltonen  Finland
team all-around	Finland (FIN) Paavo Aaltonen Veikko Huhtanen Kalevi Laitinen Olavi Rove Aleksanteri Saarvala Sulo Salmi Heikki Savolainen Einari Teräsvirta	Switzerland (SUI) Karl Frei Christian Kipfer Walter Lehmann Robert Lucy Michael Reusch Josef Stalder Emil Studer Melchior Thalmann	Hungary (HUN) László Baranyai Jozsef Fekete Gyözö Mogyorosi János Mogyorósi-Klencs Ferenc Pataki Lajos Sántha Lajos Tóth Ferenc Várkõi
floor exercises	Ferenc Pataki  Hungary	János Mogyorósi-Klencs  Hungary	Zdeněk Růžička  Czechoslovakia
horizontal bar	Josef Stalder  Switzerland	Walter Lehmann  Switzerland	Veikko Huhtanen  Finland
parallel bars	Michael Reusch  Switzerland	Veikko Huhtanen  Finland	Josef Stalder  Switzerland
			Christian Kipfer  Switzerland
pommel horse	Paavo Aaltonen  Finland	none awarded [A]	none awarded [A]
	Veikko Huhtanen  Finland
	Heikki Savolainen  Finland
rings	Karl Frei  Switzerland	Michael Reusch  Switzerland	Zdeněk Růžička  Czechoslovakia
vault	Paavo Aaltonen  Finland	Olavi Rove  Finland	János Mogyorósi-Klencs  Hungary
			Ferenc Pataki  Hungary
			Leo Sotorník  Czechoslovakia

Women's events

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze
team all-around	Czechoslovakia (TCH) Zdeňka Honsová Marie Kovářová Miloslava Misáková Milena Müllerová Věra Růžičková Olga Šilhánová Božena Srncová Zdeňka Veřmiřovská	Hungary (HUN) Edit Weckinger Mária Zalai-Kövi Irén Karcsics Erzsébet Gulyás-Köteles Erzsébet Balázs Olga Tass Anna Fehér Margit Nagy-Sándor	United States (USA) Ladislava Bakanic Marian Barone Consetta Lenz Dorothy Dalton Meta Elste Helen Schifano Clara Schroth Anita Simonis
Individual all-around†	Zdeňka Honsová  Czechoslovakia	Edit Weckinger  Hungary Laura Micheli  Italy	n/a
Vault†	Karin Lindberg  Sweden	Joan Airey  Great Britain Clara Schroth  United States	n/a
Balance Beam†	Zdeňka Honsová  Czechoslovakia	Irén Karcsics  Hungary Miloslava Misáková  Czechoslovakia	n/a
Flying Rings†, †††	Zdeňka Honsová  Czechoslovakia	Edit Weckinger  Hungary Laura Micheli  Italy	n/a
Floor Exercise†, ††††	n/a	n/a	n/a
Uneven Bars†, ††	n/a	n/a	n/a

† Within the sport of artistic gymnastics, although men were recognized with individual medals at the time, the women weren’t. The list of the individual medalists within this table reflects the individuals who garnered a top-three placement in the team competition on the respective apparatus (or all 3 combined, in the case of the all-around) and who would have been awarded a medal with the rules that commenced with the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympic Games and that would change periodically at future Olympic Games with respect to the debut of individual finals competitions at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics and with respect to the New Life rules that made their Olympic debut at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics.

†† Women did not compete on the Uneven Bars apparatus during these Olympic Games.

††† This was the only time that women gymnasts competed on this apparatus at an Olympic Games.

†††† Women’s Floor Exercise was not an event that existed at the time.

Notes

^[A] Other sources claim that Luigi Zanetti (Italy) also won a silver medal and Guido Figone (Italy) also won a bronze medal in the pommel horse event, despite the three gold medals awarded for the three-way first place tie.