U.S. gymnastics team wins gold

Anyone wagering (as McDonalds in a promotion did) that the U.S. team would not win a gymnastics medal at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles would have been considered almost a lock — the communists dominated the event, with Russia as the odds-on favorite most years defeated by China in the 1980 games. But Russia decided to boycott the games in the U.S., in part in retaliation for the U.S. and British-led boycott of the Moscow games in 1980. Suddenly, with the strongest competitors out, the U.S. team had a chance.

On this day, July 31, in 1984 the U.S. men’s gymnastics team captured the country’s first gold medal in the event. Tim Daggett, Bart Connor, Mitch Gaylord, James Hartung, Scott Johnson and Peter Vidmar — all NCAA athletes, not professional gymnasts — performed almost flawlessly, and beat the second-place Chinese team by a comfortable margin.

Gaylord was the first to earn a perfect 10 score from the judges, and Dagget followed up with a 10 of his own for his exercise on the high bar. Daggett almost did not make the team at all — he was ranked tenth after the first day of tryouts (only the top six would go on to the games), but performed spectacularly on the second day. From the 1984 games Dagget brought home a bronze medal for his routine on the pommel horse.