The title of world’s greatest athlete is usually reserved for decathletes, those superbly versatile competitors who must perform at close to world-class level in 10 events, from distance running to high jumping to sprinting to javelin throwing. But you could make a good argument that the greatest athletes in the world are gymnasts.

They also have to master many different skills — but those skills, unlike most of those in the decathlon, are utterly unnatural. If you have good running genes, you can be a competitive runner just by doing what comes naturally. But to be a competitive gymnast you have to defeat every instinct in your body: You have to turn yourself into a machine capable of defying momentum and suspending gravity.

Like ballet, the physical activity it most closely resembles, gymnastics is irresistible because of its spectacular perversity: It is so obviously not what our bodies were designed to do. Its beauty is Promethean: Every single moment of it is ferocious. It recalls Michelangelo’s Slave statues, in which the bodies seem to be wrestling themselves into existence out of the rock. To watch it is to see pure will extended in space.

I thought about this on Wednesday night as I stared through my binoculars at the great Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov as he performed his final routine on the parallel bars in the men’s individual all-around final — the competition that determines who is the greatest male gymnast in the world. Nemov held the lead, but it wasn’t that big. If he choked, fell off the bars like his Russian teammate Svetlana Khorkina had done the night before, he could lose not only the gold medal but a chance to medal at all.

A wizened veteran at age 24, he had experienced the agony of losing the gold in Atlanta because of a mental lapse: In his final event, the floor exercise, he forgot to add a twist to his tumbling. He needed a 9.75 to stay ahead of his rival for the gold; because of his oversight, he only received a 9.7. Now, four years later, after leading from the very first apparatus, he was in the same situation.

Other athletes were doing their routines in the background, but everyone in the big crowd was watching Nemov. He stood for a long time in front of the entrance to the competition area, unmoving, head slightly bowed, alone with his thoughts. Finally he slowly approached the bar, rubbing his hands delicately along it, like a violinist feeling his instrument’s neck, then gripping it the way you’d test a handhold on a cliff with a 4,000-foot vertical drop. He went over to the talcum bowl and carefully dusted his hands, then gripped the bar again. He still wasn’t satisfied. Finally he raised his arm and began his routine.

The parallel bars should be called the Procrustean bars. Like all gymnastics apparatus, from the crucifying rings to the ungainly pommel horse, they’re a torture instrument, brutally unforgiving. You launch yourself impossibly high, flip gloriously but blindly in the air and fall between them, knowing exactly where they are the way you know where your belly button is, break your fall with your straining arms and launch yourself again. It is beautiful to watch, but the least deviation, the smallest error, a bad grip, a moment in which your muscles misfire, and suddenly the world is no longer a realm of effortless magic and grace, a floating world you soar through like a god. It is a world where objects exist and gravity exists, and they hit you and break you.

Nemov’s face was upside down as he swung into his routine, the superb, massive musculature of his back and arms rippling. His face was contorted with effort. I only saw it for an instant, but the expression pierced me. It was, no doubt, the same grimace he always wore when competing, the savage mask of concentration and tremendous exertion. But this was the last routine, with four years’ work on the line, and this was the face of a great champion, who was willing himself not to lose, who would not lose. And it fixed in my mind, like a negative, even after he swung up and his face could no longer be seen.

It stayed with me, that straining, upside-down face. And after the competition was finished and Nemov was standing on the gold-colored pedestal, beaming like Christmas, with something they could never take away from him hanging around his neck, I could still see it — the face of struggle, the face of courage, the face of victory.

The South Korean city of Pyeongchang was awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics on Wednesday after failing in two previous attempts.

Pyeongchang defeated rivals Munich and Annecy, France, in the first round of a secret ballot of the International Olympic Committee.

Needing 48 votes for victory, Pyeongchang received 63 of the 95 votes cast. Munich received 25 and Annecy seven.

The Koreans had lost narrowly in previous bids for the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.

Pyeongchang will be the first city in Asia outside Japan to host the Winter Games. Japan held the games in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.

Olympic gold-medalist Lindsey Vonn has recreated that scene from “Basic Instinct” on the cover of ESPN magazine. And by “that scene” I do mean the one in which Sharon Stone infamously flashed her naughty bits to the world. It’s the magazine’s movie issue — why ESPN has a movie issue, I do not know — and it boasts a bunch of athletes reproducing classic film scenes. The headline accompanying the saucy cover photo is, wait for it, “Back to Basics.” Funny, I thought the magazine’s Body Issue — which came out just a few months ago and features exquisitely athletic naked bodies — was a return to “basics.” But it doesn’t get any more basic, or base, than paying homage to the most famous crotch shot in cinematic history.

London Olympic organizers say a record 5,000 doping tests will be carried out at the 2012 Games.

The local organizing committee has signed a memorandum of understanding with Britain’s anti-doping body and will implement the testing program under the authority of the International Olympic Committee.

London 2012 director of sport Debbie Jevans says the size of the testing program will give a “strong message that drug cheats are not welcome at the London Games.”

UK Anti-Doping will train anti-doping officials and assist them during the event to carry out a 10 percent increase on the 4,500 tests conducted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

View the slide show

Canada’s women’s hockey team has scored quite the controversy by daring to celebrate their win against the U.S. on Thursday by sipping beer, guzzling champagne and smoking cigars on the ice. After the fans filtered out of the stadium, the ladies returned to the rink still in uniform with gold medals draped around their necks. They laid on the ice, poured champagne in each other’s mouths and soaked up the Olympic glory. Their revelry hardly would have garnered any attention, except for one minor detail: there was an Associated Press photographer on hand to capture it all on film.