Jim Hartung, a gymnast and two-time Olympian who helped the United States to its only gold medal performance in the men’s team competition, an unexpected and stirring victory at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, died on Jan. 10 at his home in Lincoln, Neb. He was 65.
The cause was a heart attack, said Chuck Chmelka, the University of Nebraska’s head gymnastics coach. Hartung had been an assistant at Nebraska, his alma mater, for the past 19 years as he continued to coach even after losing his voice to treatments for throat cancer.
Hartung qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympics while in college, but the United States boycotted those Games, protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets, a gymnastics powerhouse, retaliated and boycotted the Los Angeles Games four years later.
China did not join the Eastern bloc boycott. It entered the 1984 Olympics as the reigning world champion and favorite in the men’s gymnastics team competition. As the final team rotation approached — the Americans on the horizontal bar and the Chinese on the floor exercise — the United States held a lead of six-tenths of a point.
To protect their slim advantage, the Americans could have remained cautious, particularly in dismounting the high bar. But the team member Peter Vidmar told The New York Times that Hartung had approached him and said, “This is the Olympic Games — let’s go for it.”
Scott Johnson, the first up for the United States, landed awkwardly and received a score of only 9.5 out of 10. According to the rules, the team’s lowest score would be discarded, but the five other Americans couldn’t afford serious mistakes.
Hartung delivered a reliable 9.80, competing with a swollen finger that he had dislocated before the Olympic trials. Mitch Gaylord performed an extremely difficult midair maneuver — completing one and a half somersaults with a half twist and re-catching the bar; he scored a 9.95.
Bart Conner scored a 9.90. Tim Daggett landed a triple back somersault dismount and received a perfect score of 10. Vidmar hit a double somersault with two twists and received a 9.95.
The Americans had achieved a rousing upset over the Chinese: 591.40 points to 590.80.
It remains the only Olympic gold medal won by the American men in the gymnastics team competition. (American and Austrian competitors won what was called a mixed team title at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis.)
The 1984 victory was so surprising that Abie Grossfeld, the American coach, compared it to the United States hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” defeat of the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.
In an interview, Grossfeld recalled that after Thompson had put his hands down during his rickety landing, Hartung “had to hit his routine, and he did.”
“He was very consistent his whole career,” he added.
James Nicholas Hartung was born on June 7, 1960, in Omaha, Neb. His father, also named James, worked for the local power company. His mother, Karna (Madsen) Hartung, ran the household.
Hartung joined a gymnastics club at an early age, and his father turned their backyard into an outdoor gym, placing a high bar between two trees and fashioning parallel bars from the hand railings of steps, recalled Chmelka, the Nebraska coach and a friend of the Hartungs since boyhood.
At South High School in Omaha, Hartung won 18 state gymnastics titles in individual events and three all-around titles. When he was inducted into the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame in 1993, he said, “When I was 12 years old, I watched the Olympics and I remember saying to myself, ‘That looks pretty cool, I think I might like to do that.’”
“From the time I was about 14 or 15,” he added, “I thought about the Olympics every day of my life.”
At the University of Nebraska, Hartung won seven N.C.A.A. individual gymnastics titles — still tied for the national career record — and helped lead the Cornhuskers to four consecutive national team championships, from 1979 through 1982. He received a bachelor’s degree in business in 1983 and was inducted into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015.
After retiring from competition not long after the 1984 Games, Hartung began coaching and judging international gymnastics meets. While judging at the world championships in 2010 in the Netherlands, he discovered a bump on his neck that was diagnosed days later as throat cancer.
Hartung, a nonsmoker, recovered from the cancer, Chmelka said, but lingering effects from radiation treatments affected his esophagus and lungs. Eventually, he lost the ability to speak. He kept coaching by writing, whispering and mouthing his instructions.
“He was the toughest man I knew,” Chmelka said.
Hartung is survived by a daughter, Hannah Hartung; three sons, Jim, Nick and Jake; a sister, Laura Davis; and his brothers, John and Jeff Hartung. His marriage to Lisa Bollinger ended in divorce.
Vidmar said in an interview that Hartung, twice inducted into the U.S.A. Gymnastics Hall of Fame, was “the backbone of the team in terms of dependability.”
“We all had our blunders,” Vidmar added, “but he was a loyal team player and as dependable as can be.”
Jeré Longman is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk who writes the occasional sports-related story.
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