Kurt Thomas, the first U.S. male gymnast to win a world championship gold medal, died Friday, his family said. He was 64.
“Yesterday, I lost my universe, my best friend and my soulmate of 24 years," wife Beckie Thomas told International Gymnast Magazine. "Kurt lived his life to the extreme, and I will be forever honored to be his wife,”
After competing in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Thomas won the floor exercise in the 1978 world championships in Strasbourg, France, for the first U.S. men's title. In the 1979 worlds in Fort Worth, Texas, he successfully defended the floor exercise title and won the horizontal bar.