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 coverage hungrily, eager for every second of imagery. No wonder Soviet gymnastics had such mystique - it literally was mysterious and impenetrable.
Souvenirs and publications from that time still retain their charisma for me today, in some cases more than 40 years after their release.
What I'm sharing with you now has probably been posted online before, but it is my single favourite piece of memorabilia - a story about ten year old Svetlana Boguinskaia in training with the Soviet national team. I make no excuses for the Boguinskaia love I'm pouring into this blog at present. She went on to become the greatest ever artistic gymnast, both as performer and competitor. Unmatched on the floor, beam, vault and bars, her routines on every piece were choreographed and timed to perfection. She truly performed and expressed her gymnastics. She did not compete showy or exceptionally difficult skills for the time, but the composition of her routines was always more sophisticated and complex than her closest rivals. This subtle power made a world of difference to her gymnastics.
The Soviet coaches and press seemed to know that Boguinskaia would become Queen well before the rest of us had even caught sight of her at the 1987 World Championships. This article, from the July 1983 edition of
Sport in the USSR - an illustrated monthly produced in Moscow in the English, French, German, Hungarian and Russian languages, and printed on the same presses as leading Russian language newspaper, Pravda - was the first occasion that we heard the now iconic name. The article loud hailed the coming of a great new champion.
Also depicted in this
Sport in the USSR article are Oksana Omelianchik, a year before she made her senior national debut at the Alternative Olympics in Oloumoc, and Irina Baraksanova, whose coming out was at the 1984 Junior European Championships. Please comment below if you recognise the faces of any of the other gymnasts depicted in the article. Natalia Studenikina (see the videos on Youtube of her competing at the
1984 Druzhba competition where Boginskaya also performed) also features, and Marina Kalinichenko is another name mentioned.
But Boguinskaia and her coach, Liubov Miromanova, are the undoubted stars of the show. National junior coach Anatoly Kozeev helps Miromanova as Boguinskaia stubbornly insists on trying the triple back dismount off bars. National reserve coach Konstantin Krutiev lends a hand as the young girl prefers workout to relaxation. The depiction of the relationship between Boguinskaia and her personal coach is touching, especially in view of the tragic circumstances that would unfurl only a few years later.
Boguinskaia was little more than ten years old at the time that this article was written. She was then, and remains now, a special, exceptionally motivated, well grounded individual. She loves her family, values her friends, works and plays hard. She is unique. This article, by Natalia Cherepanova, presaged much of the truth of Boguinskaia, a remarkable child who went on to become an icon of Soviet and world gymnastics.
