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.