Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Adrian McArdle pointed me to this cute - but impressive - video of Elena Zamolodchikova, aged 13 or 14, competing in South Africa in 1996. Four years later, she would be a double Olympic champion, on vault and floor. What an incredible, if occasionally somewhat erratic, competitor she was.  My first view of Super Zamo was in a junior team competition in 1995 in Guildford, in the south east of England.  Her team mates included the peerless Elena Produnova, and the great Russian promise of that time, Evgenia Kuznetsova. Elena Zamolodchikova was then a tiny scrap of a thing,  every cubic millimetre packed with dynamic energy.  She competed only vault but charged the gymnastics hall with electricity.  I'll never forget that fierce, reckless sprint towards to the vault.  She possessed energy, motivation and skill at a time when Russia's gymnasts were powerful, innovative and fearless, a thunderbolt of sheer grace.  She impressed me in a way I will never...