Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Gymnastics has lost some of its appeal over the past few years, whilst Russian athletes have been out of competition.  This might be an unpopular opinion, but it reflects the reality of international gymnastics without around a quarter of its leading protagonists.  The international competitive field has not raised its performance in the absence of Russia's leadership; gymnasts from the top ten or fifteen have floated upwards in the ranks to fill gaps in the medal placements, and we see mediocre performances gaining gold, silver and bronze medals.  Gymnastics has lost some of its imagination and vision without Russian athletes. This doesn't detract from the efforts of the world's best gymnasts.  Gymnastics quite simply needs the special abilities of Russian athletes to provide competition for our international contenders and drive the sport to ever greater things.  In particular, artistry has been almost entirely lost without Russian athletes to provide a good e...

I’d like to add some thoughts to my earlier post about USA gymnastics and Bela Karolyi:  1. What Bela did, he did. He would agree that his actions were his responsibility. 2. Abusive relationships in USA gymnastics (and no doubt elsewhere) pre-existed Bela’s move to the USA and still exist today. 3. Harsh training existed and exists in all of the ‘artistic’ sports and dance-related forms - eg ballroom dancing, ballet, ice skating, circus.  The training involved in most of these activities is founded on an assumption of the benefits of early specialisation.  It revolves around  ‘ideal’ forms, shapes and postures that are difficult to achieve without early years training - women especially.   4. Wherever prodigious early talent exists, there are predators whose main desire in life is to take advantage of that talent - music, entertainment, maths, sport.  The boundaries very easily become confused.  Who owns the talent?  Who decides how many hours to...

RIP Bela Karolyi. We were all mesmerised by the gymnastics that Nadia Comaneci brought to the world.    Some of us wanted to be like Nadia.    Others wanted to share her glory. When Kerri Strug saluted the judges with a hop and a cry of agony, thousands of adults cried for joy, felt inordinate pride that a love of country had inspired such courage and strength.   When generations of elite gymnasts, many of them gold medal winners, spoke out about the abuse they had experienced whilst practicing their sport, those thousands and millions of cheering adults didn’t stop appreciating the gold medals. They did start to look for someone to blame, someone who could take responsibility for the entire systemic nastiness that enabled the abuse to take place.    Some chose the man who came to fame as Nadia Comaneci’s coach, and went on to shape elite gymnastics training in the USA, Bela Karolyi. But who facilitated and enabled Karolyi?    Who endors...

It is with great sadness that I report here the sudden and completely unexpected death, on 5th October, of our friend Vladimir Zaglada.  I send my love and condolences to his daughter, Olesya.  My thoughts are with the whole family.   Vladimir was born in Lvov, Ukraine, in November 1944.  His father was a progressive lawyer of great courage who was known to defend those who challenged the Soviet authorities.  Vladimir trained as a sports acrobat under the developing Soviet sports system, working in the same club as Olympic champion Viktor Chukarin.  After moving to Moscow, he became a leading coach of women's gymnastics, supporting the development of high level acrobatics.  He worked particularly closely with the up and coming young gymnasts of the early 1980s - you can see him at work in the video 'You in Gymnastics'.  At the national training centre, Lake Krugloye, he worked with Filatova, Mostepanova, Yurchenko, Arzhannikova, Mukhina and m...

Our dear Tatiana Nabiyeva has married!  It appears that she now lives in China.

⚡️Vasily Titov re-elected to the International Gymnastics Federation Executive Committee ❗️The vote took place at the organization's congress in Doha. "Despite the difficult political situation, we did not stop cooperating with the International Gymnastics Federation, actively interacted with it and defended the interests of our athletes," Titov said. "We did everything to ensure that Russia's voice was heard. My re-election is not the result of my efforts alone." "This is an understanding in the world that world gymnastics is impossible without Russia, Russia must be present in the main governing body of the International Gymnastics Federation," the agency's interlocutor noted. "Yes, the elections took place in difficult political conditions in the world, but everything possible was done to ensure that they had the least impact on the election results." 🌐 TASS

The President of the Russian Gymnastics Federation, Oleg Belozerov, said that the organization plans to develop club tournaments and gymnastics leagues in the country. “A total of 791 thousand people are involved in gymnastics. The development of gymnastics is of historical significance for our country. Because gymnastics training is basic for almost all sports. Gymnastics contributes to the harmonious development of a person” “The calendar of our domestic competitions will be further developed. We will continue to develop competition formats, such as club competitions, and even gymnastics leagues may appear” “But I consider the key issues to be increasing the availability of gymnastics sports for the population, so that almost everyone who wants to can have the opportunity to do it either for a fee or for free, namely to create such conditions, and also to participate in competitions.” 🌐 MatchTV! https://vk.cc/cCNAU3

Translated from R Sport.  What the President says about relations with the FIG and IOC is echoed by Nagorny in another short interview.  Nagorny wants there to be international competitions with Russian gymnasts - but this doesn’t account for the sanctions.  Given his work as a TV/online producer he may be looking for a form of cultural exchange that sidesteps the usual structures.  But I wouldn’t bet on it happening … Now read on, via Rsport: Oleg Belozerov, head of Russian Railways, who was elected president of the Russian Gymnastics Federation, said that the unification of gymnastics federations of countries was the most important element for direct interaction with the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). 🙏"I would like to thank all the participants of today's conference for electing me president of the Russian Gymnastics Federation: the Ministry of Sports, the Russian Olympic Committee, and delegates. The most...

Presidium of the Russian Gymnastics Federation 🇷🇺 Artistic gymnastics: Vasily Titov (First Vice President), Nikita Nagorny (Vice President), Andrey Rodionenko, Dmitry Andreev, Alexander Klochkov, Anton Krapivin. Rhythmic gymnastics: Anastasia Tatareva (Vice President), Olga Kapranova (Vice President), Yana Lukonina, Victoria Anikina, Raisa Terekhova and Dmitry Golovin. Trampoline jumping: Nikolay Makarov (Vice President), Vladislav Skakun, Irina Karavaeva, Anatoly Kovarsky, Alexey Ryzhkov and Elena Fedorenchik. Sports aerobics: Vladislav Oskner (Vice President), Svetlana Perevalova and Svetlana Lukina. Sports acrobatics: Irina Nikitina (vice-president), Teimuraz Gurgenidze and Dmitry Vinnikov. ❗Oleg Belozerov, the president of the Russian Gymnastics Federation elected on October 1, is also a member of the presidium.

Some major shifts in the way gymnastics is being managed in Russia, and in the personnel.  Irina Viner has resigned as President of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation. A decision has been made to merge the RGF, the Russian Trampoline Federation, the Russian Sports Acrobatics Federation, the All-Russian Federation of Sports Aerobics, and the All-Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation into a single RGF. The new President of the RGF will be Oleg Belozyorev, CEO and Chairman of the Board of JSC Russian Railways.  He was the only candidate standing at the election.   Nikita Nagorny has been made Vice President.  He says: ‘I have the honor of becoming the vice-president of the Federation and being responsible for the direction of artistic gymnastics in our country!’ Nagorny says he won’t retire from competition for the time being, despite announcements from Valentina Rodionenko to the contrary.   I’m unsure what the implications are, but both Nagorny and Beloz...

I’ve reached a time in my life when it’s more important to watch the birds and listen to my nephews and nieces laughing than it is to write about Russian gymnastics.  I  have a couple of ‘wrap ups’ in the pipeline but that’s all, folks. The Olympics just aren’t the Olympics without the Russians, at least for me.  I wish Russia would put their energy into great sport instead of military endeavours.  I’m no fan of the IOC and the Russian gymnasts did a lot of good for peace and friendship over about 70 years.  But Russia’s leaders are letting their people down.   I’ll continue to walk alongside Angelina Melnikova and will post occasional updates of her work and life on my RRG Facebook page.  She is remarkable.   I hope that Russia’s young gymnasts can find a way to continue what is essentially their livelihood, if necessary by moving overseas.  It would be great if some of them could study abroad. I’m unfollowing Nagorny.  He walked with a...

I’m supposed to be taking some time for my mental health, not writing blog posts about gymnastics.   It’s not only my mental health, but that of the whole gymnastics and sporting community.  You, my readers, know that the Court for the Arbitration of Sport has reassigned the bronze medal in the FX event at the Olympics.  We finally have the right finishing order, but the FIG is at huge fault here.  The appeals system went wrong in both its substance and its process, and before that the judges had failed, giving us inaccurate marks and unfair finishing orders.   The gymnasts, Jordan Chiles and Ana Barbosu, are suffering and instead of unbounded joy and pride they feel humiliation and confusion and embarrassment.  That the judges couldn’t get the medals in the right order first time (and that there’s still one out there, Sabrina Voinea, whose question is left unresolved) is the biggest pair of oversized pants since the last time the FIG messed up.   That...

  Almost ten years ago RRG covered a story about a story of doping of Soviet gymnasts in 1968.     For some reason, that story is receiving a lot of hits on my site at present, and I don’t know why.  So a word of caution. The RRG story is a story within a story - a story of how stories can become distorted in the telling.  It centres on an article that had appeared in The Observer in November 2015.  The article had been talking about sports doping in general, and used pregnancy doping as an example, presenting allegations as truth. Pregnancy doping would be a vile abuse of a woman’s trust, more abuse than doping, and subject to the same rules of reporting as apply to abuse everywhere.    You don’t name victims of abuse unless they have spoken out themselves, and you shouldn’t pursue or doorstep an alleged victim of abuse for journalistic purposes.   The whole social context is difficult - contraception was poor quality in 1960s Soviet Union, ...

The FIG managed to do it again and set us all off talking about the scoring and how dreadful it was, rather than the performances and how brilliant they were. I personally loved that Alice d’Amato won beam with the best executed routine.    I think that the sport undervalues good execution in general, and this was a moment when the judges got it right. It’s a pity that there weren’t fewer falls overall in this final, but it’s the nature of the beam that people fall from it, and the major good thing today was that the champion was the one who stayed on the beam.   I’m an oldie.    I used to love the hushed silence in the audience that fell as the best gymnasts were performing.    The first time I experienced this in person was in the Ahoy Stadium in Rotterdam, at the 1987 Worlds, when Silivas stepped up to the uneven bars.    It reminded me of Korbut in Munich, and Comaneci in Montreal.    It didn’t happen all that often, but it...

 BOGUINSKAIA (USSR-BLR) Born 1973 in Minsk, Belarus At age 6, after a period of time in ice skating, began gymnastics with coach Liubov Miromanova, occasionally training at the USSR national training centre in Moscow, Lake Krugloye.  Her ambition was boundless.  She was determined to train a triple dismount off uneven bars.  She wanted to be the first to compete the double twisting Tsukuhara (Boguinskaia’s Tsukuhara).   Soviet national coach of the junior team, Anatoly Kozeev, supported Miromanova and Boguinskaia, and her first major international assignments followed at the age of 12. The International Junior Cup in Japan, 1985, was one of her first overseas competitions, a nd in 1986 she became Junior European Champion. By 1987 she was winning medals at the World Championships. And by 1988 was hanging Olympic gold in her medal cabinet. Great sadness overcame Svetlana and her loved ones when her coach, Liubov Miromanova, committed suicide in the days immed...

Simone Biles is not the only story in Olympic gymnastics, though she may be the easiest and most compelling angle for general sports reporters. Actually, though, a bigger story is that the Russians aren’t at these Games - well, apart from a few judges and officials whose wisdom, technical knowledge and taste distinctions obviously make the sport of gymnastics hang together.    At least the FIG must think so and the IOC must agree, as they have given the judges permission to attend and officiate. If some branches of social media are to be believed, even Russian journalists have been declined accreditation at the Games - just in case they are spies. Bercy is haunted by the ghost of Russians past and present who have filled its vertiginous, intimate  rangs  with passionate, noisy and highly knowledgeable followers for decade after decade of heady gymnastics.    Every great Soviet and Russian must at some point have competed here in this grassy clad arena, surr...