History
Although it only recently became a competitive sport, acrobatics has long been an important component of modern artistic sports such as gymnastics, diving, and figure skating.
From the Greek for "walking on tiptoe," acrobatics includes a variety of maneuvers involving balancing, jumping, and tumbling, often with such apparatus as tightropes, trapezes, unicycles, balls, barrels, and poles.
Acrobatic feats were depicted in ancient times, on Egyptian murals and Greek vases. Minoan art, dating to about 2000 BC, shows many scenes of young men and women performing acrobatics on or over the backs of bulls, believed to be some sort of religious ritual. It appears that acrobatics were often linked to funeral rites, probably because of the death-defying nature of many stunts.
During the Middle Ages, acrobatic performances were common at European courts and itinerant jongleurs traveled from town to town, entertaining peasants with a mixture of acrobatics, song, dance, juggling, and sleight of hand.
The words "acrobat" and "acrobatics" referred only to rope walking when they entered the English language. However, their usage was extended during the 19th century to include many types of activity used both for physical training, in gymnasiums, and for entertainment, in circuses and other similar traveling shows.
When gymnastics became a competitive sport in the late 19th century, one of its disciplines was tumbling, a form of acrobatics practiced on mats, and most of the other gymnastics disciplines also incorporated acrobatic moves.
As a modern competitive sport, diving was patterned after gymnastics, and "fancy diving" also included acrobatic moves such as mid-air somersaults, twists, and spins.
After hovering on the periphery of sports for decades, acrobatics became a sport in its own right in the Soviet Union, beginning in the 1930s. The International Federation of Sports Acrobatics IFSA was founded in Moscow in 1973, and the first world championship were held there the following year.
United States Sports Acrobatics (USSA), founded in 1975, is now an associate member of USA Gymnastics, and the IFSA was absorbed by the International Gymnastics Federaation (FIG), in 1999.
Sports acrobatics was a demonstration sport at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
There are five disciplines in sports acrobatics: Men's, women's, and mixed pairs, women's triples, and men's quadruples. Originally, there were also individual tumbling events for men and women, but those were dropped from the world championships in 1999.
Each team performs three routines to music on a 12 by 12-meter mat. The balance routine is made up of poses demonstrating flexibility and handstand techniques. The tempo performance emphasizes tumbling. The third routine combines balance and tempo. Each routine is limited to two minutes and thirty seconds.
