The gymnastics events were the most coveted and tickets were the most difficult to obtain. We applied for both Mens and Womens gymnastics but only obtained tickets for the Mens. The Womens gymnastics were the only events that we didn't obtain tickets for our first, second or third choice of events (you could select several alternatives such as Womens team event, Womens individual apparatus, etc.).
   The Mens event that we got was the apparatus preliminaries, and it was also the first event that we did not have the best tickets. The seats we had were fine as far as seeing the action (since many events took place simultaneously) but they did not allow for great picture taking since we were far away from most events and had to shoot with telephoto lenses. Furthermore, the lighting was not great and this meant both using fast (grainy) film and relatively slow shutter speeds that could not adequately stop the action for many shots.
    The gymnastics events were held at Pauley Pavilion on the campus of U.C.L.A. and despite the fact that it was only about a mile from our house, it made more sense to go to the federal building and park in order to take the shuttle busses into campus. The busses completely eliminated the parking problem at the venues for those who took advantage of them and many of us did. This also meant that the traffic was considerably lessened.
   Prior to 1984, the Japanese and the Soviets had dominated Mens. gymnastics, but the Soviets boycotted the 1984 Olympics much as we had in 1980. In both cases the ones who really lost out were the athletes who trained so hard for their events only to be denied the opportunity to compete due to a perceived political advantage to be obtained by boycotting by the government.
   The United States men team of Bart Connor, Peter Vidmar, Mitch Gaylord and Tim Daggett dominated the competition from the beginning. While we did not have tickets for the team competition, we did see some of the individual apparatus events where some of the American men won golds.