  Olga Kharlova (left) in 1966, with the USSR World Championships team. This is before her marriage to gymnast Valeri Karasyov. Lauren Cammenga found the original Kommersant story about the bogus pregnancy doping story. The date of the article is 10th December 1998, and not as reported in my original article on RRG of 29th November. Do you agree that The Observer should now print a correction to its story of 15th November? |
SPID-Info
is up the Creek 35,000 Rubles
Author: Maxim Stepenin
Translator: Lauren Cammenga
Olga Karasyova, a USSR, European, world,
and 1968 Olympic champion in artistic gymnastics, has been awarded 35,000
rubles in damages from the newspaper SPID-Info.
The Ismailovsky District Court awarded this, a record-breaking amount for suits
of this kind, in emotional damages for a 1997 interview supposedly conducted
with Karasyova. In reality, the interview supposedly given by Karasyova was
given by an impostor from Germany.
It was the German journalists who were the
first victims of the fraud. What’s more, they fell victim a long time ago. On
November 21, 1994, the TV channel RTL, which plays in Germany but is operated
in Luxembourg, aired a live interview with a certain Olga Kovalenko. She was
represented to the viewers as a merited Master of Sport, 1968 Olympic champion,
1971 world champion, and multiple European and USSR medal-winner in the sport
of artistic gymnastics. She gave a sensational exposé of the supposed methods
used by the State Committee for Sport and coaches to obtain such stellar
results. “They forced us to get pregnant by our coaches, and after 9-10 weeks,
just before important competitions, we had to get abortions. The thing is,
during that time hormone levels in a woman’s body increase sharply. This
stimulates physical development and can boost results. That’s how we won.”
A number of European publications ran the
story, and all of them were duped. It turned out that the real owner of all the
titles listed above never gave an interview to RTL. The day the live interview
aired she was on a Mediterranean cruise with a bunch of Olympic champions from
various eras.
There was also a discrepancy over the
athlete’s surname. The champion was known by the name “Karasyova,” not
“Kovalenko.” She only took her husband’s name, Kovalenko, after she left the
sport, although by the time the interview aired she was “Karasyova” once more.
Karasyova, in Moscow, began to be exhausted
by reporters from foreign publications, though when they heard the whole story,
the reporters became disappointed. She was planning to sue RTL, but that turned
out to be too difficult and expensive. Everything would have blown over, except
that three years later Spid-INFO, a monthly publication, unearthed the
bogus scandal.
In April of 1997, Spid-INFO
published an article by Irina Ovanesyan called “In Bed with Coach.” Ovanesyan
used excerpts from that sensational “interview” and added doctors’ commentary.
She also said that she “spoke with Olga Kovalenko, who lives and works abroad,
over the telephone.”
The real Kovalenko-Karasyova, who has
always lived in Moscow, remembers the shock she felt. “After all, everything had
already been sorted out! I had even had to give the Russian Olympic Committee
an official explanation! And here it was again!” The former gymnast ended up in
the hospital with a nervous breakdown. When she was released, she began trying
to get Spid-INFO to write a retraction, but wasn’t able to solve the
problem amicably. It was then that Karasyova pursued a libel lawsuit. In
addition to a retraction, she requested 250,000 rubles in emotional damages.
In court, Spid-INFO insisted that
Ovanesyan spoke with a woman named Kovalenko in Germany, and even gave a phone
number where she could be reached. Karasyova’s lawyer could not reach anyone at
the number, and everything became clear. A few days later the court ruled that Spid-INFO
would have to publish a retraction. The amount of damages was lowered
substantially, but 35,000 rubles is still a rare amount for this type of case.
Only the Vertinskaya sisters (Anastasia and Marianna, famous Soviet actresses)
won more, in their case 142,000,000 old rubles (the ruble was redenominated on
1 January, 1998, shortly before the 1998 Russian financial crisis) from the
newspaper Megapolis-Express. Now Karasyova says she has decided to go
forward with the lawsuit with RTL.
Karasyova told a reporter for Kommersant
that she’s never heard of the kind of scandalous method of gymnastics
achievement that is now attributed to her. “It’s all rubbish,” she said.
With many thanks to Lauren for her translation!
Link to the Kommersant article - http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/210330
Link to the RRG article which gives the background - http://rewritingrussiangymnastics.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/fact-or-fiction-press-gymnastics-and.html
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