The Olympic Games features dozens of sports in its competitive lineup, including multiple disciplines of singular sports. For some of these disciplines, the differences between them are easy to spot—cycling road is obviously different from cycling track in the arena where the competitions are held. But some Olympic sports are so similar to each other that it’s hard to tell the difference, even from the name. While most people think of gymnastics as a sport of agility and balance, what is the difference between the rhythmic and the artistic competitions?
At its core, rhythmic gymnastics is all about presentation and style: rhythmic gymnasts perform routines of leaps, contortions, and dance that flow in time to music. Artistic gymnastics, on the other hand, is more technical, rewarding precise movements and athletic strength. Only women compete at the Olympic level in rhythmic gymnastics, while both genders compete in separate competitions in artistic gymnastics.
Although they compete differently, artistic and rhythmic gymnasts both use apparatuses that enhance or aid performance. Each set of tools, however, has a completely different function. An apparatus used in artistic gymnastics is a set piece for its own event, on which athletes climb, balance, and maneuver to show off their skills. These tools include the pommel horse, still rings, parallel bars, and high bars for men, the uneven bars and balance beam for women, and a vault and floor exercise for both genders. Rhythmic gymnasts, however, perform a single floor exercise, extending their movement and dance with the use of ropes, hoops, balls, clubs, and ribbons.
Rhythmic gymnastics is scored on elements such as use of space, body language, and synchronicity with music. In artistic gymnastics, athletes are scored on the basis of the difficulty of their movements, their exhibition of certain skills on each apparatus, and their ability to combine multiple skills into different movements.