Facts, lies and information

Three key members of the team - Komova, Mustafina, Paseka

The Russian press is so alive it's hard to keep track of all the coverage. I began this morning with a mission to review and post the most important links sent to me by the ever faithful M, by Alan Owen, and discovered by my own research, and have found myself 'painting the Forth Bridge' (the Scottish bridge that, it is rumoured, is impossible ever to complete painting because as soon as you reach one end, the other is in need of retouching).  It made me think about what we are all doing on the gymternet.






Read the title of the post if you wonder what I have been reflecting on specifically.  The net is full of information that has been reported and then passed quickly from reader to reader in a process of 'Chinese whispers'*.  News exchanges from person to person so quickly on the internet and often gains a life of its own. For example, on the 14th July I posted a Lupita translation of a Sports Express article in which national team coach Andrei Rodionenko was reported as saying that Nabieva had been injured the day before the control competition.  He also said that she didn't have the 2.5 Yurchenko vault that Paseka does have, thus sealing the selection fate of these two particular gymnasts. He didn't say how serious the injury was, or whether it had prevented her from competing in the control training and competition - just that she had an injury.

Now, of course, we have online stories of Nabieva's complete incapacity to compete for the team, disaster in the final days leading to her assignment as reserve (by the way, what would be the point having her as reserve if she couldn't compete?).  This, despite Oktiabr's astute observation that she was photographed practicing bars with the team the day AFTER Rodionenko had said she had become injured, albeit with a bandaged knee.

I do not think that anyone is lying about this; but it appears that Chinese whispers, a lack of clarity in communicating the uncertainty of the national team coach's original information, have led many to believe what might be questionable.

Does Rodionenko have any moral obligation to inform us gymnastics fans of the health of his gymnasts?  Do we have a right to hear the full story?  As bloggers, fans, posters on gymnastics forums, we are onlookers, unable to control what we see.  For most of us who do not compete or coach, our virtual interaction with news stories and with the gymternet is the only way we are active within this world.  There is a natural tendency to try to know everything we can know and to discuss, analyse and interpret that information to try to make sense of an incomplete picture.  But we are constructing our own reality.  The relationship of that reality to the lives of the gymnasts and coaches is undoubtedly somewhat moot.

Andrei Rodionenko and his wife, Valentina, are like chalk and cheese. Andrei R is a bubbling volcano of tension, drily humourous, speaks very comfortably on strategic matters but otherwise doesn't really give that much away.  His wife, on the other hand, is the exact opposite - dirpping in prime bits of information which she generously gives away left, right and centre.  I cannot find a picture of Valentina where she isn't obviously chattering animatedly, or gesturing expressively.  It is difficult to know what to think, which perhaps is the desired result.  Although, somehow, I suspect it is not a deliberate tactic.

But my, does Valentina create a lot of hot air (almost as much as John Geddert).  I do sympathise with Elfimov (see my earlier post) in wanting to calm things down a bit and be more realistic.  I just hope the rest of us will let him.

 

*Chinese whispers = you know, that game where you whisper to your friend 'we're having macaroni for dinner', and she whispers it to her friend and so on and so forth so that by the time all the friends have exchanged the whisper, the final person has heard 'I'm having a date with Paul McCartney'

Picture of the girls relaxing outside the Novodevichy Convent this weekend, by kind permission of the Russian Gymnastics Federation.