Highlights from an interview with the 1981 and 1985 World Champion, from the RGF’s magazine ‘Gymnastika’. Yuri died suddenly in April 2023.
Are you a children's coach, or do you prefer elite (‘champion coach’).
I like working with adults more. It’s easier with them. After all, this is my level in gymnastics and it’s easier for me to convey it. You are a nanny with children, all the time you are fighting with yourself: it seems that you have already brought your best to the international platform, but you are busy with “cartwheels” and somersaults.
Would you have won the AA at the 1984 Olympics?
I'm 90 percent sure that I would have won it. It’s impossible to say one hundred percent in sports, but there is no doubt that I could have fought for first place.
On his gymnastics home, the Nikolai Tolkachev School of Gymnastics in Vladimir
They say that on any platform you can immediately recognize gymnasts from the Vladimir school... This is the technique, cleanliness, choreography that has been going on since Tolkachev's time... We are working in the same way now.
On working abroad and being at home
I worked in France and after a while realized: I can’t do it anymore, I want to go home. It had been hard for me for a long time without family, without acquaintances, without friends. There you are alone, absolutely no one needs you, no new friends, nothing. Therefore, I returned and stayed at my native school in Vladimir. We lived close together, as they say, but no one complained, although my wife (a doctor) didn’t even work at the time, and we were raising two children …
-Are you a home person?
Y-a-a-a... I love being at home, especially at the dacha. I always find something to do there: I dig beds, plan, nail... I just like spending time with my family. My favorite time is summer: picking mushrooms, fishing, drinking tea on the terrace on a warm evening ... I wouldn’t even go to Moscow …
Yuri’s honours
Yuri was a Komsomol (Young Communist League) leader for two terms (c 2-3 years) and was captain of the Soviet MAG team. He competed at senior level from 1981 to 1988.
He won 13 World Championships medals, 13 European, and 12 World Cup (at a time when Worlds and Euros took place once every two years, and the World Cup once every four). (As a comparison, Dmitri Bilozerchev won 12 World Championship medals and 11 at Europeans.)
The Soviet team did not take part in the 1984 Olympics. First, in 1980, the USA boycotted the Moscow Olympics; then in 1984, the USSR boycotted the LA Olympics. This is why so many brilliant Soviet athletes of that era (Yurchenko, Mostepanova, Ilienko eg) have no Olympic honours.
The 1987 World Championships were very closely fought. Dmitri Bilozerchev took the gold, with Yuri in second place by only .025 after three days of competition. In those days the scores were cumulative, including the averages from the team competition (compulsory + optional) and the AA.
The Soviet team was incredibly strong. Valeri Liukin would have qualified for the AA ahead of Yuri but he had to withdraw with an injury. Yuri’s team mate from Vladimir, Vladimir Artemov, took third place in the AA - and then went on to win the Olympic AA title.
Yuri missed out on the 1984 Olympics because his country didn’t compete there. He was on the Olympic team for the 1988 Olympics, but snapped his Achilles tendon a few days before the team travelled to Seoul.
He was one of the greatest gymnasts ever, and is missed.
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