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}} Bart Conner (born March 28, 1958, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American former gymnast who, as a member of the gold medal-winning men's gymnastics team at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games won an individual gold on the parallel bars. Conner was also the 1979 World Champion on that apparatus. Conner currently owns and operates the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy〔http://www.bartconnergymnastics.com/〕 in Norman, Oklahoma along with his wife, Romanian gold medalist Nadia Comăneci. He is also a commentator for televised gymnastics events and an editor of ''International Gymnast Magazine''. Conner was also part of the 1976 and 1980 USA Olympic gymnastics teams. He won the World Cup in 1979, and the American Cup in 1976, 1980, and 1981. He has been inducted into several Halls of Fame, including those of the US Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, International Gymnastics and Oklahoma Sports. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2012.〔Oklahoma Heritage Association. "Oklahoma Hall of Fame." Retrieved December 8, 2012.()〕 ==Early career== Active in sports as a child, Conner started gymnastics at the age of ten, after a school physical education coach noticed his talent. He began training with the Niles West High School team and competing in local meets, where he progressed quickly but seldom won. After a few years, he also began training and competing at the local YMCA. Conner's first significant gymnastics victory was the 1972 AAU Junior Olympics, followed soon after in 1974 by the USGF Junior National Championships. Immediately following his high school graduation in 1976, he went on to join the United States team as its youngest member at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He attended Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois. He was on the gymnastics team at Niles West, where he set records that remain unbroken. During his senior year at Niles West he was not allowed to compete, because he competed in the Olympics for his country and thus missed too many school days to be eligible. Conner attended the University of Oklahoma to work with coach Paul Ziert on the gymnastics team, which was then ranked 19th nationally by the NCAA. In 1981, Conner won the Nissen Award (the "Heisman" of men's gymnastics).〔http://usagym.org/pages/home/college/nissenemery.html〕 According to Ziert, Conner is relatively unsuited physically for gymnastics due to his relative lack of spinal flexibility, and his weakness in tumbling skills. However, Ziert is quick to add, Conner's motivation and dedication to the sport combined with his other physical abilities helped him quickly advance to the world-class level. In 1979, he won the parallel bars event at the World Championships with an original move called the "Conner Spin." In this move, the gymnast performs a complete 360-degree turn on one bar in a straddled position, and then presses to a handstand. Much of Conner's early career was seen as a rivalry between him and fellow American Kurt Thomas, another top competitor whose style differed from Conner's. Thomas, more physically gifted than Conner, impressed judges with his explosive strength and high degree of difficulty in his routines; Conner's strengths were in his solid consistency and artistic presentation. The media made much of this rivalry, and though the two were good friends, the publicity around their rivalry and media exaggeration incited ill feeling between them for a time. Conner was the first qualifier for the 1980 Olympic gymnastics team and did not support the U.S. boycott of the Games. He made several media appearances in which he described the boycott as "futile" and protested the Olympics being used for political purposes. However, due to a torn biceps he suffered during the Olympic Trials, it is unlikely he would have performed well had he competed. Because he continued training after this injury, his recovery took more than a year. In December 1983, competing at the Chunichi Cup, Conner tore his left biceps during his rings routine. Due to several bone chips floating around his elbow, his arm mobility was limited, which placed undue stress on the muscles of the upper arm during the strenuous activities of competitive gymnastics. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bart Conner」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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