Vlasta Děkanová (September 5, 1909 – October 16, 1974), a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast, was the first World all-around champion in women's artistic gymnastics. Early life Děkanová was born in Prague in 1909. Her father was a dedicated member of Sokol and the manager of a gym in the Žižkov district of Prague. She progressed through the Sokol system, graduating in 1933. She performed locally at the Lucerna Palace. Beginning in 1928, Děkanová started touring and performing in exhibitions internationally in countries including Belgium, France, Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia. In the United States, she performed in exhibitions in Cleveland, New York, and Washington. Competitive career Děkanová made her World Championship competitive debut at the very first 1934 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships for women held June 11 and 12 that year in Budapest, Hungary. Reportedly, cheating in the scoring was uncovered and corrected, allowing the Czechoslovakian team, of which she was a part, to win the team title. There was no individual competition. But when all of the individual totals were added up, Děkanová had the highest overall total. With the reputation Děkanová built there, she and the Czechoslovakian women's team went into the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics as the favorites, but ended up placing 2nd to the home-advantaged German team. Consistently near the top in scoring in both the compulsory and optional segments in both the vault and uneven bar parts of the competition, she was the top non-German competitor (4th, overall, out of 64) given those two events combined: on vault she placed 3rd in compulsories, 9th in optionals, and 6th overall; on bars she placed 7th in compulsories, 5th in optionals, and 8th overall. But somewhat less highly-awarded performances, within the overall context, for her exercises in both segments of the beam part of the competition, (18th in compulsories, 33rd in optionals, 23rd overall), meant that she ended up finishing 6th in the individual standings. These relatively lower scores on beam kept her from finishing much higher, almost assuredly within the top 3, if not on the very top, in the individual standings. The approximate score difference between 1) what her beam scores would have been if they were more in-line with her placements within the other two apparatuses (vault and bars) in the competition and 2) what they actually were, would have ended up being at least 1/3 of the score gap between her Czechoslovakian team's 2nd place