Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Imagine a time when there were no videos, no internet, no blogs.  A time when World Championships results often didn't reach the press (incomplete) until days after the end of the competitions.  When results of the national competitions in other countries took months to reach you, if at all.  No Valentina Rodionenko press reports to ruffle your feathers, no Instagram posts from your favourite gymnasts, no Nikushkin Day videos to familiarise you with what the gymnasts want you to know of their everyday lives.  No live streaming, no video posts of the youngest gymnasts.  Secrets were secrets and details of upgrades and innovations rarely reached the lay person's ear before they were revealed at major competition.  There was no Google translate to help you untangle news of your favourite Soviet gymnast. Information felt like gold.  We pored over words and pictures for every ounce of meaning, sometimes more than was there.  We devoured televised cov...

A few of you have commented how much you love the compulsory floor from the 1985 cycle.  I've done my best to find videos of as many performances as possible.  Please do feel free to comment on their merits below.  This post is for the sheer hell of enjoying beautiful gymnastics. Some of the gymnasts may be repeated from one competition to the next, but take time to watch closely and see how their work varied and improved. This is the very essence of gymnastics. Please also post links to videos missing from these sequences if you can - this posting is far from complete. It is sad to see how the quality of the video has deteriorated, some without sound even. In ten years' time, will there still be a record of this remarkable cultural heritage? 1985 World Championships Natalia Yurchenko View it on Youtube . As Ludmilla has mentioned, it's impossible at the moment to find the routines of Baraksanova, Mostepanova, Shushunova, Omelianchik and Kolesnikova. ...

In the autumn of 1989 I travelled to Stuttgart, Germany, for the World Gymnastics Championships. There, I was enthralled by the performance of the best Soviet women's team I ever saw, and the six best floor exercises there have ever been. The videos you will see below are not the best quality, but they have been selected for atmosphere, presenting the exercises in the order they were performed that evening, accompanied by audience sounds. We were all vocal supporters of the Soviet team, that night. National team coach Alexander Alexandrov, interviewed after the competition by a local newspaper (I think it was the Suddeutsche Zeitung) explained how the team had worked with choreographers from Moscow's world famous Bolshoi Theatre. One thing that really strikes me today is how different each floor exercise is, drawing on diverse dance traditions, from the folk-inspired work of Sazonenkova to the modern dance of Boginskaya. Each gymnast's work is a short, consummate...

I should be writing some important work this afternoon but instead find myself drifting off to the Olympics ... past, as well as present.  I am a little disappointed not to be able to see the Russians fight for gold at my home Olympics at last ... but never mind.  Let's remember some of the greatest Olympians ever, and hope for the golden tradition to be continued in 2012. 1952 - Marina Gorokhovskaya on uneven bars (she took silver on this apparatus, but was the all around champion) You may well love the interesting techniques she uses here. Look for the enthusiastic audience participation too! Watch it on Youtube . 1956, 1960 and 1964 - Larissa Latynina on floor She's so languid. In 1956, it was the Latynina and Keleti show, with Latynina winning the all around and sharing the gold on floor with her Hungarian rival. In 1960 Latynina held onto both the all around and floor golds, keeping the gold in 1964 but being beaten to the all around title by the glamorous Ve...

The book arrived on Thursday and I couldn't wait to get started on it.  It's also too large to fit into my handbag, so I won't be able to take it to Berlin, and therefore have the perfect excuse to read it now.  Which I'm doing in my typical butterfly manner, skipping from section to section, from back to front to middle in no particular order.  This ease of reading is facilitated by the author's style, in which the main central thread is his stream of consciousness, leading to the feeling that you are involved in a rather one-sided conversation with your loquacious long-lost Russian (or Ukrainian?) uncle full of stories of his rich life in gymnastics. I'm not even going to attempt a full review of the book until I've had a chance to read it through twice or three times as there is much to absorb, and sometimes what is left unsaid leaves you feeling you haven't quite got the point.  There are some intriguing cliff hangers in the book, especially a brie...

Have just contributed briefly to a thread on Stoi during which the importance of teeth to artistic expression was raised as a point of conversation. I would like to share with you here an example of a gymnast before and after the fall of the Soviet Union/availability of dental work. The gymnast who forms the subject of this case study is the unrepeatably brilliant Goddess of gymnastics, Svetlana Boguinskaia. First of all, see Svetlana perform her most divine, expressive routine at the Chunichi Cup in 1990. Sadly, I couldn't find the BBC coverage of her routine in the event final of the Brussels World Cup, when the commentators maintained air silence throughout the routine, the only time I have ever known them do so. But then that was in the days of Barry Davies, who appreciated the value of silence. This routine is utter magic. (I was in the arena at Brussels and she oozed pure, poignant emotion. Definitely a meaningful routine for her.) Now, let us compare that perf...

A Russian team has never before won the world championships title in gymnastics history. The last time we heard that sad, soulful anthem played for a team of six women was in 1991, during the era of the Soviet Union, and there was not one Russian girl on that team. You would have to go back as far as 1985 to find more than three Russian women on a winning Soviet team. So this era of Russian gymnastics is truly outstanding and exceptional, and full of promise. When Komova graduates to the Russian senior team in January, all things being equal, the two top all around gymnasts in the world will be training at Lake Krugloye. Last night I saw a dominant Russian performance in the all around competition. For many, many years I thought I would never see this again. Brown-eyed Aliya Mustafina, only just turned 16 years of age, raised the flag for Russia. And if I sound uncharacteristically reticent in my description of this amazing gymnast, it’s simply because I lack ...