Arrest Tarnishes Gymnast Korbut’s Golden Past

Fans of former champion gymnast Olga Korbut still bubble in awe over her daring back flips and her megawatt charisma. But then they pivot, voices lowered, to topics that make them cringe: Korbut’s recent arrest on a shoplifting charge--and her possible link to $30,000 in counterfeit bills found in her former home.

As the Winter Olympics open in Salt Lake City, Korbut, a four-time gold medalist, finds herself under investigation here in the suburbs of Atlanta.

She was arrested last week in Gwinnett County on charges that she shoplifted $19 worth of merchandise from a grocery store. A security officer at the market accused her of shoving chocolate syrup, cheese, figs and tea into her purse. Korbut called it a misunderstanding and said through a lawyer that she was confident the charges would be dismissed.

But in the meantime, the Secret Service announced it is investigating a stash of counterfeit bills found in the suburban home where Korbut lived until recently. Sheriff’s deputies who entered the house Dec. 5 to serve an eviction notice found the fake $100 bills, which apparently had been dummied up on a computer. Some of the bills were still on uncut sheets of printer paper.

Korbut’s manager has said that she moved out of the house--which has the Olympic rings marked in brick on the driveway--after divorcing her husband in 2000. Her son, Richard, had been living there most recently, although the house was dilapidated and by all appearances abandoned by the time deputies arrived to foreclose.

Investigators are studying a computer found in the house for clues as to who might have printed the bogus currency. Korbut has denied any involvement and has said, according to her manager, that she wants to take a polygraph test. But authorities said they might not even need to question her.

“Obviously, she’s the past owner of the house . . . , but to be fair to Olga Korbut, no one’s naming her” as a suspect, said Bill Creel, the assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Atlanta office.

Creel noted too that the counterfeiting case is nothing spectacular: It is one of scores of fake-money investigations the Atlanta office undertakes every year. “This really is a routine investigation, other than the fact that her name has come up.”

The name, however, makes it anything but routine.

It’s been 30 years since Korbut dazzled the world with acrobatics at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. But her reputation remains formidable among gymnastics fans. They remember the teenage Korbut, a pixie in pigtails, sticking a backward flip on the balance beam and another during her uneven bars routine. No one had ever seen any feat like it. Korbut won three gold medals in that competition for her native Soviet Union.

Korbut returned to win another gold in the 1976 Olympics. And in 1988, she was the first athlete to be inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

For the last 11 years, she has lived in the Atlanta area, teaching kids gymnastics for $25 to $50 a lesson. She has earned the fierce loyalty of many parents, who describe her as loving, upstanding, modest and exacting--and still capable, at age 46, of remarkable gymnastics moves.

Her arrest on the shoplifting charge stunned many who know her. So has the buzz about her onetime residence; the deputies who found the fake $100 bills described the home as heavily vandalized, with kitchen cabinets and toilets dislodged and some of Korbut’s gymnastics memorabilia strewn about.

“It is just so sad that all this is going on,” said one mother whose children study gymnastics with Korbut. “I have to tell you, she is the kindest person you would ever meet. The kids adore her. They respect her. She’s a very ethical person, with a lot of character. . . . I just wish everyone would leave her alone.”

A woman who used to work with Korbut at Vinings Athletic Club echoed the praise: “We all knew her as a wonderful person, and she was wonderful with the kids. I can’t imagine she would be involved with this. I don’t believe any of it.”

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Stanley reported from Atlanta and Simon from St. Louis.