Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

 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...

Dear Readers I moved house in October and am still filtering through boxes and reordering my life - moving is always like this!  This morning, I have begun to browse through my gymnastics archive and to reflect on just a little of the material that has given my writing life over the past few years.  Over the coming year or so I will be posting on this blog less, as I wish to concentrate on the preparation of a book I have been planning for some years - please be patient.  My archive will continue to fuel my ideas, but I will also need to keep up with current developments in the sport in Russia.  There is a lot going on, not just within gymnastics but within the wider political, economic and social spheres.  I don't want to give too much away, but I will keep you up to date with anything major. It has always been a joy to share things with you on this blog and I intend to continue.  Today, I'll post a few scans of items I have found in m...

Just picked up Peter Aykroyd's 1987 book  International Gymnastics: Sport Art or Science?.  Seeing it reminded me that gymnastics is in a constant state of flux and change; its identity has been subject to debate and conflict since the earliest days of competitive gymnastics, well before it existed in the form we recognise today.  I want to try to talk about the state of the sport today, how it compares to past models, how it arrived at this point, and what are the questions arising. I make no apologies for publishing the picture comparisons on this page, which were created by Lifje.  Some have seemed to find them rather challenging in the past, but they are not airbrushed or altered in any way.  Yes, the pictures are purpose selected for the sake of comparison, but they express a truth about the direction the sport has taken over the past few years.  They are not so much about Russia versus America as artistry versus athletics.  I do not pretend...

This picture of Svetlana, taken in 1992 at the European Championships in Nantes, is one of my all-time favourite gymnastics shots.  The name of the photographer is Ewa Bednarska. Every single detail of Svetlana's position reveals the intense forward momentum and harmony of the movement at the moment the shutter clicked.   The angle of the head and eyeline communicate a sense of coiled energy that also reveals itself in the position of the arms and the clenched fists.  Even the swirling design of the leotard echoes the cursive, distinctive shapes that the gymnast created. What was remarkable about the routine as a whole was that the gymnast barely stopped moving.  There were no static poses or contrived arm waving.  The leaps flew through the air without any suggestion of bounce or rebound.  Every single action created a coalescent expression of the music. You can watch Svetlana here as she won the silver medal all around at those Championships.  She ha...

I came across this 1992 book about a year ago, thanks to a link on Facebook; I can't remember whose.  I was lucky enough to be able to buy a copy on Amazon (it is now long out of print).  In the middle of sorting out my sports books, I remembered that I wanted to share this treasure with you. A spread from the lavish hardback book : Yulia Kut, Tatiana Toropova and Svetlana Boguinskaia at Lake Krugloye, prior to the Barcelona Olympics. The author and photographer, David Turnley, made a journey through Russia shortly after the break up of the Soviet Union, and this photo journal documents his experience.  It is a story of a society in transition, an art book and not a sports book, but it is still one of the best books in my collection. David speaks of the gymnasts' daily lives, and talks to Soviet team captain, 1989 World Champion, Svetlana Boguinskaia. He comments that the training is professional, but the facilities 'rudimentary', the living conditions 'sparse'....

Isa Alexandrova has translated this conversation with Svetlana Boginskaya by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya. Svetlana Boginskaya leaps to a beam gold medal at the 1991 World Championships We hadn’t seen each other since the Olympic Games in Atlanta. After the Olympic Games, the three-time Olympic champion and five-time World champion Svetlana Boginskaya finished her gymnastics career. And pretty much disappeared from the public view, by moving to America … EV           Sveta, I tried to find on the internet at least some interviews with you, even any vague ones - and didn’t find any.   SB            I don’t really give interviews often, especially after the OG in Barcelona in 1992 and after I left for  America in 1993. EV            I remember that almost all of the gymnasts from your “Golden” team left to participate in the comme...

Svetlana Boguinskaia during team qualifications at the 1988 Olympics I'm lucky enough to own a copy of a limited special edition entitled 'Svetlana Boguinskaia - L'Etoile de la Gymnastique - Le Charme Slave'.  It is full of pictures of the most photogenic gymnast ever, the best competitor, the best performer.  And it includes a brief interview with Svetlana, in French, where she details the everyday moments of her life as a gymnast at Lake Krugloye.  I'm translating it for you below, as a contemporary account of her training. You will also find a rather intriguing video, from 2005, of Boguinskaia's adult account of her life as a gymnast. 6.45 am.  Someone has just knocked on our door.  Alexander Alexandrov comes into our room; I am already sitting on my bed, having woken up about a quarter of an hour ago.  My eyes still full of sleep, I watch him wake my room mate. 'Come on girls, let's go, let's go' he keeps repeati...

Today, we embark on a series of insightful and, occasionally, gruesome articles looking at the achievements of our FIG President, Professor Bruno Grandi. Grandi took up office in 1996, having been Vice President of the Italian Gymnastics Federation since 1987. I suppose he will modestly claim only partial credit for the abolition of compulsories following the 1996 Olympics. The wheels of this particular change were set in motion before he came to power. But our President Bruno surely embraced it, wholeheartedly. Brett Davis, my former editor at The Mogilnyi , posted this morning a wonderful montage on his Facebook site, comparing the highest scoring floor compulsory (Lilia Podkopayeva) with the lowest scoring (Eileen Diaz). For me the distance between the marks (9.85/8.4) in no way expresses the glaring differences in their work. View it on Youtube . Brett's post was a timely reminder of how vital the compulsory exercises once were, and how they emphasised the importan...

Well, yes, they are Belarussian, but these two are icons of perhaps the greatest era of Soviet gymnastics. See the video they appear in here .