Welcome to Olympic Year!

Aerial view of Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro.

It's 2016, a year of many hopes and promises for us all, Olympians or not.  We are all looking forward at this time of the year and I hope everyone achieves at least a little of what they plan.  Begin your work now, and enjoy the journey.  Most of all I wish everyone much happiness and peace.

In Russia, the gymnasts are back at Lake Krugloye and beginning their preparations for the summer, 'step by step' as Aliya Mustafina put it this morning on her Instagram.  Sergei Starkin has been keen to stress the importance of the men's team and in particular Denis Ablyazin to Russia's Olympic effort.  

Valentina Rodionenko has made some announcements of team membership for the summer Olympics, but these are too early to make any difference - everyone is training for the Games and the key decisions will be taken much later in the year.  The announcements were initially made via the Russian Olympic Committee's website at the same time as a lot of other Russian sports announced their Olympic intentions, so they seem to be part of a strategy to promote sport in the Olympic year. 

The context is that Russian sport has been hit hard by the discovery of systematic cheating amongst some of her track and field athletes, aided and abetted by what could be state intervention at the local WADA doping centre.  Her athletics team has been banned from the Rio Olympics.  In the absence of some of her highest profile competitors, Russia has to find other sports who can carry the national flag in Rio, and gymnastics has a responsibility to step up and support the country's reputation.  This is a pressured time for all sports in Russia and the wider world.  You can understand why the powers might want to make it clear that Russia will still have a strong presence in Rio.

On the 14th January the results of a second stage investigation into doping in sport will be published.  WADA chairman Dick Pound has said that there is worse to come, first for Russia as other sports will be implicated in the scandal.  Secondly, other countries have also been found out.  We will have to wait and see what 'comes out in the wash'. 

It's a responsibility when reporting on these matters because they touch so closely the human beings who are involved.  Some of them may be villains, but there are others who could be victims in a larger game.  Cheating in sport is a violation of the basic principles of a human phenomenon that is as old as the ages.  This phenomenon, sport, has an important role in fostering common endeavour, friendship and peace, locally and globally, at whatever level of participation.  We cannot ignore the 'dark side' of sport if we want to support the overwhelming good it does.   Often when I watch a gymnastics competition I am touched by the respect and support the competitors have for each other, and I think that gymnastics is one of the best sports to watch because of this.  But, obviously, life would not be life if everything were perfect.  Gymnastics has its dark side too and I have had to report on some pretty shocking allegations in the last few weeks. 

I have struggled with this.  While gymnastics has a fairly clean slate when it comes to doping, the nature of any infringements tend to be rather more serious than just cheating, as they often involve the exploitation of young people.  The 'pregnancy doping' allegations that have recently been churned up by an article in British broadsheet The Observer are particularly sensitive as they could involve a form of state-endorsed sexual abuse. 

These allegations seem to be false.  Russian journalist Vladimir Golubev, who has published widely on gymnastics, did an interview with 1968 Olympian Olga Karasyova which basically revealed as a 'hoax' the 1994 German TV documentary that made the allegations.  Paris Match journalist Michel Peyrard travelled to Moscow to meet with Karasyova and was horrified to find that after he had travelled so far, there was no story at all to cover. 

Still, the Observer declines to publish a clarification to its recent story.  I am interested to know the reasons why, but reluctant to press too hard.  Not least, this is not my injury or a matter that I can speak about first hand (any more than the Observer journalist can).  What if there were some element of truth in the allegations?  The last thing I would want is to make things worse for the gymnasts.  This is a matter that is private to them.  Writing anything about this subject is treading a fine line and I have therefore decided to follow the principle of 'do no harm'.  I have put English language translations of the key articles into the public domain but otherwise will leave well alone unless asked to do more by those who have been directly affected.

I began this blog over five years ago and my curiosity about Russia remains undimmed, although my focus on gymnastics has become a little blurred.  I still enjoy watching men's gymnastics, but I find women's disappointing; almost unwatchable.  This blog records my constant reflections and developing understanding of the phenomenon we have so far known as artistic gymnastics, but increasingly I am beginning to understand my interest as revolving around the state of Russia, the people of Russia and the feeling of Russian-ness that imbued the sport of gymnastics for so long.  In a sense, I am looking at Russia through the lens of gymnastics. 

Both gymnastics and Russia are a paradox.  The best gymnastics, seen at the top competitions, is visually appealing, emotionally affecting, and awe inspiring.  The training - at the elite level - necessarily involves a strong discipline that can appear brutal.  It is the same with every sport, but in gymnastics there can be a particularly stark contrast between the harshness of the training, and the artistry of the performances.  The very young age of some of the competitors also presents unique ethical challenges.  Russian culture bears the marks of a similar paradox - the beauty and light of great music, literature and dance created from a wider background of real brutality, terror and threats to survival. 

Soviet gymnastics bears a double paradox as it is set within this, latter, context.  I am beginning to view the phenomenon from within this wider frame of reference.   I have recently been touched by an amazing BBC TV documentary, Leningrad and the Orchestra that Defied Hitler, all about the siege of Leningrad and Shostakovich's seventh symphony.  It says more than I could ever imagine.  In September I also saw the film Red Army, and was fascinated to hear the story of another Soviet sport, ice hockey.  I didn't expect to like Slava Fetisov, the ace player of the Soviet five who made ice hockey look like ballet, who has become an important Russian politician - and also happens to be the son-in-law of Russian gymnastics head coaches Andrei and Valentina Rodionenko.  But he is engaging and entertaining, honest and funny.  His story tells us much about Russia and the Soviet Union, too. I have a lot more work to do on these two particular sources, and on a few other stories that keep cropping up.

A highlight of the coming year, besides the Olympics, will be the publication of Dvora Meyers' book The End of the Perfect Ten: the making and breaking of gymnastics top score from Nadia to now.  Dvora has been working on this book for more than a year, and has conducted many, many interviews in an attempt to understand the changing shape of the sport globally over past years.  It promises to contribute much to the picture of world gymnastics.  The book will be published on July the 5th and you can pre-order copies on Amazon now.  Make sure to do so, to ensure that the book receives the publicity and profile it deserves. The publisher will be looking to measure interest, print runs and publicity budgets by the number of orders the book receives.  I am really looking forward to reading it. 

My publication plans are to keep on going as usual with this blog, which I love.  Please forgive me if posts are a little more sporadic than usual - my full time work is busy and I am having to fit my love for Russian and Soviet gymnastics into my increasingly rare 'free' time.  I want to publish my own book or books on the subject and will have to make some life changes to find the time to do the work justice.  My writing partner Vladimir Zaglada knows how unreliable I have been over the past year to 18 months; I hope to put things right in the not too distant future, although it will involve upheaval.

One of my favourite gymnasts - ever - is Natalia Yurchenko.  It seems to me that she is very much a Russian gymnast, one whose performances are full of light and emotion, whose innovations were truly revolutionary, who married art and acrobatics in a way that has never been matched.  Today, she lives happily with her family in Chicago, where she owns her own gym and is training a group of elite gymnasts.  Beneath the serene charm and mystery of the dark-eyed Yurchenko there is a steely determination to succeed.  Keep watching this blog for an exclusive interview with Natalia in the next few days.