Selection Criteria

The Board of Directors of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame selects those qualified for induction. Nominations may come from the national federation of those nations who hold membership in the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), or may be nominated by the Hall of Fame Board of Directors. Formal enshrinement ceremonies are held once each year, normally in mid-summer.
Gymnast Category:

A gymnast must have won an Olympic or World Championships medal, of any color, in an individual event. Following the winning of the medal, they must have demonstrated over a period of not less than 10 years a role of active participation and contribution to the sport of gymnastics, both nationally and internationally.
Lifetime Achievement Category:

An individual, to be considered for induction in this category, must have demonstrated significant influence on the development of gymnastics in their homeland and in such a way as to have measurable impact on that nation's participation internationally. Such influence shall be evaluated over a period of not less than 20 years.

March 12, 2002
Kim Clayton Pan American Plaza 201 South Capitol Avenue Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46225


Subject: Sports resume

Charlie Pond had recently returned from fighting in WWII and was determined to carve out a name for himself by training champion tumblers and gymnasts. He invented the twisting belt and was training a bunch of promising tumblers at the Dallas Athletic Club where my older brother, Skippy was diving.


Charlie believed he could make a national tumbling champion out of me and that became my goal so our ambitions were the same. I began training under his direction at age twelve.


Five years later Charlie Pond was the gymnastics coach at the University of Illinois. I went up there from Texas in my junior and senior years of high school to continue my training under Coach Pond’s direction. In my junior year I won fifth in Tumbling at the National AAU meet.


In another year I had had perfected my skills and won the National AAU competition as a senior in high school by beating the current national champion, Irv (Shorty) Bedard.


For the next three years I dominated the field by winning every competition I entered on the tumbling mats save one. I won 5 gold medals in national competition.


Strangely, I gained most notoriety by doing a simple round-off back somersault. It was a trick I learned in the first few weeks of training under Charlie. The only difference was that they placed a high-jump bar across the mats and I broke the current world’s high jump record by four and a half inches.


I was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the next twenty years as the world’s greatest tumbler.


There was no international competition in tumbling at the time so that was as far as I could go. The Korean War was going on. I hung up my tumbling shoes and joined the navy for a career in aviation. I spent eleven years flying navy aircraft and an additional twenty five years flying the big jets for American Airlines.


Abie, that is about the crux of my tumbling career. What I didn’t mention was that my success as a scholar was in inverse proportion to my success on the mats. I was rarely eligible to compete in college meets. Yet when I joined the Navy, I graduated from Pre-Flight near the top of my class in academics. I prefer to think that perhaps I was just in the wrong curriculum in college rather that the more obvious conclusion that I am dumber than dirt.


Richard L. (Dickie) Browning

(Sheila) What is your most memorable moment in regards to your gymnastics career?

(Dick) Some of the memorable moments were of course getting good enough to win as often as I did. Other than that I guess it was the high jump.

(Sheila) How did the the whole Guinness Book entry come about?

(Dick) It was in December of 1953 just before Christmas. We gave a little sports demonstration at a nearby town. The fencing team was there as well as the gymnasts and baseball coach. I don't know who else. On the way home, Charlie, my coach, was riding in a seperate car from me. With him was the baseball coach and a photographer from the local paper. The baseball coach commented to Charlie about the height I obtained while tumbling. In reply, Charlie boasted that I could break the big ten high jump record if I wanted to.

"Bull....," says the base ball coach.

"You want to bet?," countered Charlie.

So a couple of days later Charlie called me on the phone and asked if I would come up to the gym to take a picture.

"I'm all packed and ready to go out the door for Texas and Christmas vacation," Says I.
>br> " It won't take long," Charlie assured me. So I went up there. There was just the baseball coach, Charlie and the photographer. I didn't know about the bet. I suited up and warmed up and asked Charlie what he wanted me to do. He took out a tape measure, held one end down with his foot and held the other end up in the air as he stood by the mat. "Let me see how high a back flip you can do." So I complied by running down the mat, doing a round-off which is a sort of cartwheel with a half twist which converts all that forward motion into backward motion. Then a backward handspring. Now I am going end over end at a rapid clip. Then driving my feet into the mat all that momentum catapulted me into the air for the back flip. The photographer took the picture and that was that. I was rather put out that that is all I had been asked to do. As the national champion I was doing double back flips and double twisting back flips in combination with other gyrations. Just to do a high back flip was rather elementry. I went home to Texas.

When I came back after Christmas, Charlie called and wanted me to come up for pictures again. I thought maybe he wanted me to really do my thing this time, but when I got up the gym here were all the major television and news paper media in the country. The picture that photographer had taken showed me breaking all kinds of high jump records and it had been sent out over the Associated Press wire. Now here were all these news people wanting to see me do it over a highjump bar. (See above stobe photo). If you will look at that picture, you can see what we are talking about. You can also see that I am going backward and cannot see the highbar I am attempting to clear. I knocked the bar off with my head a few times until I figured out where to begin the round-off . You might also note that I did not do a normal back flip. I didn't figure it out that day, but by the time this picture was taken I had learned that in doing a regular back flip my head would come up under the bar and knock it off so I learned to do rather a back dive over the bar than tuck on the way down to complete the spin and land on my feet.

I never attended a track meet. There was a rule that highjumpers had to take off one foot at a time. I was taking off both feet at a time, but might have managed it with practice. The thing is that the track coaches didn't want it. They didn't know how to teach it. But the thing created quite a stir. I was featured in articles in Time, Look, Life, and even Popular Mechanics Magazines. I never practiced it except when someone wanted to take pictures of it or for a demonstration some place. I might have even been able to get higher. As it was, the best I ever did was clear a bar 7 feet four inches. The current worlds high jump record then was 6 feet eleven and one half inches.

The most challenging part of the whole caper was probably the day they took that picture which was taken by the Life Magazine photographer. He blackened all the windows. The gym was completely dark. Then he set his camera shutter open and turned on a strobe light so that every time the strobe light flashed a picture was taken. Now try to picture if you will trying to perform that maneuver in total darkness with a strobe light hitting you in the eye.


(Sheila) What medals do you currently have?

(Dick) I gave each of my children a gold medal won at national AAU meets. I won a National NCAA gold medal in 1954 that I still have. Jan has framed it along with a cover from a Guinness bood of world records and what was said about me in it. They listed me as the World's Greatest Tumbler from 1954 to 1974. By then they had put springs under the tumbling mats and tumblers were able to do harder tricks. I can take a picture of the display and give it to you the next time I see you. That is the only medal I have. I guess Nancy might have some of the regional medals I won along the way.


(Sheila) What school did you attend while all this media frenzy was going on?

(Dick) I attended the University of Illinois. Dropped out in my Junior year and joined the Navy. The Korean War was going on.


(Sheila) Do you know who was responsible for you being featured in the Guinness book?

(Dick) I don't know. Someone told me it was in there and I was surprised. I had never heare of the Guinness book before. I think the high jump had something to do with it.

Pics and text of Life Magazine to come >/P>

(Sheila) What books have you written?

About my writing endeavors. I was flying along as a co-pilot with AA one day in the early 70's when the engineer observed that most people say they would like to write a book, but most people couldn't. I thought about it for a while and decided that I could write one. So I began writing the MIDWAY TO PARADICE book. I realized I could use a writing teacher. Nelma Haines was giving a class in down-town Dallas in creative writing and I joined in. Later the class broke up but I continued to bring by the Midway book chapter by chapter as I wrote it and she provided suggestions. Midway was my last duty station in the navy. It was a unique experience and I wanted to tell abhout the life out there. The book was also about a tangled love affair. At the time I was going through the emotional turmoil of breaking up with Carol and getting involved with Jan. This was a protracted thing that went on for 7 years. Writing the book wasa a way of sorting out my emotions of being in a marriage that wasn't working, wanting to stay there and raise my children, yet needing the love and affection that Jan was providing and Carol was not. When I finished the Midway book, I went on and started the GLUTCH AND TRIPLE STUFF. Nelma Haines helped me with that one too. Back in 1960 I was on a 5 month cruise on an LST to various islands in the Pacific in connection with setting up the Pacific missile range. The islands were beautiful and seeing them from a helicopter was unique. Helicopters were still fairly new in those days. I hatched the idea that what I would really like to do was get a boat and a helicopter and tour the world making documnetaries. When I got home and told Carol, she as less than enthusiastic. So I settled down and started a family and eventually went to work for American Airlines. I never really wanted to be an airline pilot. But the money was too good to pass up. But the helicopter dream wouldnt go away. So I wrote the Glutch book instead where a Navy helicopter pilot decides to be the first to fly a helicopter around the world. The Glutch was the helicopter. It was a broken down reject that had been projected to sell for scrap. After I wrote it I decided it would probably make a better childrens book, so I altered it by putting in an inventive orphan named Charlie to invent the Triple stuff which was a special fuel. Charlie ended up the hero. About the time Jan and I moved to East Texas, a publisher was interested in the book. He kept wanting me to make changes. I had just too many things I needed to do and eventually just quit trying to please the publisher. So both the midway and Glutch books were originally written in the early 70's. Later, David and I tried the documentary thing, but never could compete with the big money producers. It took about a year to write the Midway book an another year to write the Glutch book. Only a couple of years ago, Mary Winklebeck at the Unity church got me going again on the writing. She taught a writing class. Then somehow she got me on to revising the Glutch and Midway books. I completely rewrote them both. Mary didn't like the Midway book so I put it aside. The Glutch I sent off to various agents. One agent wanted to try to sell it, but failed. While the agent wa trying to sell the Glutch book, I wrote two sequels. The EDUCATION OF CARLOS was about the same boy wizzard who invented triple stuff, Charlie. At age 12 he built his own hydrogen filled baloon and chanced to stumble upon a drug deal while drifting above the tree topsin the Glutch book. Now in the Carlos book he flies his little ultralight aircraft from New Hampshire back to Fairfield, TX. Fairfield is where he lived with his aunt at the beginning of the Glutch book. Charlie is forced to stay in Fairfield until he finishes high school. The princliple is one of the drug dealers he is trying to hide from. So he self educated himself though high school in record time so he can go flying with the crew he circled the globe with before.

In the third sequel, LOST CITY, I placed this adventure in the little town David, my son and I visited in the Bazilian jungle. David and I visited it back in the 70's when he was a teen. Charlie gets sick and is left behind while Marvin takes the Glutch off on a mercy mission. Charile is healed by a native shman who then trains Charlie to be a shman and to do soul travel. The natives do not wear clothes. Charlie makes friends with a girl his own age. Life expectancy is short among the natives. The girl is thinking marriage how at age 13. Charlie doesnt have a clue. He never figures out why she acts the way she does. The two sequels were both purposely kept short, only about a 100 pages. I finished them both in less than a year. (Dick) "The Glutch and Triple Stuff", 2 sequels, "The Education of Carolos" and "Search For The Lost Cities". Then I wrote "Midway to Paradise" about Midway where Andy was born. My latest, "Spiritual Journey" was a biography for Sandra Benson, Minister at Unity Church, In Tyler, TX.

The book THE GLUTCH AND TRIPLE STUFF appealed to a literary agent, but She was unable to get a publisher to print it. The sequels are just sitting here gathering dust. Same goes for "Midway to paradise". SPIRITUAL JOURNEY was the shaman book. I never figured it would have wide appeal, but I self published it because I knew people in the Tyler Unity Church would like to hear about Sandra and her shamanism.