Skip to main content

Korbut/Knysh rape allegations resurface

Image
By

Knysh and Korbut in training, 1973

Olga Korbut has repeated her allegations of mistreatment and rape by her coach, Reynald Knysh, in a Russian Jerry Springer style panel show.  She first made these allegations public in the early 1990s.

Supported by her sisters, and her first husband Leonid Bortkevich, Korbut confronted Knysh, who has repeatedly protested his innocence, revealing that he had been suspended from the national team after an investigation into complaints made in the 1970s.  Korbut says her abuse went on for over one year.

An occasionally hostile audience, and a sceptical panel who included 1968 Olympian Olga Karaseva, could not drown out Korbut's strong and assertive performance.  After Olga was accused of lying, former husband Bortkevich spoke out: 

'I was married to Olga for 25 years and she never lies'.  

It is now too late for any legal redress against Knysh.  
.
A Sports Express report of the documentary includes a video of the show.

Update : a better, fuller translation from Luba at Gymnovosti.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown22 February 2022 at 18:21

    Why would she say something like that if it didn't happen? Because she's telling the truth.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maria Filatova: Russian Sparrow Made in the USSR

By
Maria Filatova – the first ever picture taken of her doing gymnastics! By kind permission of Maria Filatova Kourbatova My first memory of Maria Filatova is a little girl with huge, white ribbons in her hair, so tiny she seemed to have to stand on tiptoe to be able to see over the balance beam.  At 4’ 6” tall, she was the smallest competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, yet she was already part of the Soviet senior team, competing alongside such established stars as Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Elvira Saadi and Olga Korbut.  The ‘Siberian Sparrow’, trained in Leninsk-Kuznetsk by Innokenty Mametyev since a very early age, celebrated her 15 th birthday on the 19 th July 1976, the day of the team final.  That night, she slept with her first – not her last - Olympic gold medal beneath her pillow. For all her cuteness, Maria Filatova was a fearsome gymnast and competitor.  If the crowd were awed by the pyrotechnics of Romanian technician Nadia Comaneci, they we...
5 comments
Read more

The State of Gymnastics - 'Soviet' or 'American' style?

By
Lioudmilla Tourischeva, 1972 Olympic All Around champion in artistic gymnastics, was held up as an example of the ideal Soviet citizen.  Here she coaches one of the Soviet Union's leading gymnasts from the 1980 Olympics, Natalia Shaposhnikova The Soviet Union had a genius for lifting sport beyond the textbook, injecting the aesthetic where previously only goals had been in plain view.   This was not only manifest in gymnastics.  Do you remember the ‘Russian Five’, the players who elevated ice hockey to a creative sporting display, mesmerising their opponents and spectators with intricate patterns of play, so rhythmic and entertaining that they could have been set to music?   In gymnastics, a sport where the aesthetic counted as much as the outcome, it was this ability to create spectacle out of competition that resulted in the most extraordinary athletic performances.  The ‘Golden Era’, most commonly understood to cover the years from 1952-1...
15 comments
Read more

Viktoria Komova - I will be ready for the Rio Olympic Games. Interview with the Russian WAG team.

By
Aliya shows off the team#s patriotic manicure!  Picture courtesy of the RGF Veronika has kindly translated two TV interviews with the Russian WAG team in Baku.  At the moment, the videos aren't available in the UK as they have been geoblocked, but I have provided the links below. Now read on ... Interview with Dmitry Zanin (correspondent). A couple of years ago an interview with Aliya was a difficult test for a journalist, but now everything is quite different.  - So was your job simply to win and nothing else?  Or just to compete with all your strength and show everything that you can do? Aliya - Not at all, you can't set a target to win or to take first place - the task was the same for everyone.  We had to compete our programmes, perform well enough and then the result will follow.  - How is your health, how much of your programme is ready, do you have pain? Vika - No trouble or pain, I am about 70% ready.  It is hard to compete...
1 comment
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more