I’ve questioned myself time and again about gymnastics, ever since the ‘Me Too’ messages began appearing on my Twitter feed.  Are we, fans, culpable of supporting a sport which is inherently brutal?  Have we elevated our sport because of the brutality involved in making it to the top?  What is it about gymnastics that has somehow led to the tacit acceptance of abuse as a way of life?

Only a few years ago Dominique Moceanu published her book, calling out her parents and her coaches, the Karolyis, as abusive.  Did we stop and listen?  No.  We labelled Dominique an ‘attention seeker’. 

And what about ‘Little Girls in Pretty Boxes’?  Did we rush to support the injured parties?  Insist on a sports-wide review of coaching practice?  No.  There was a media storm and lots of huffs and puffs, but we never got round to blowing the house down. 

At the end of the day, weren’t we mesmerised by the promise of gold?

Abuse has been hiding in plain view for decades, not just in gymnastics but in other areas of high performance including sports, ballet, circus, theatre.  It is a global, long-standing problem that exists wherever young people rely on adults for instruction and support, and where high performance is the objective.

How do we moderate welfare and performance?  What is our priority?

Changing the age at which gymnasts can begin competing has been suggested, but legislation or regulation has limited results in a global context.  The FIG can make rules but national culture or governance can always find ways to sidestep or subvert the rules.  Countries are the big villains.  Collective culture muddies the waters and confuses priorities.  National administrations cover up, encourage malpractice, force athletes and coaches to break rules.  Collectively, we feel absolved of responsibility and cheer top performances, elevating others’ personal sacrifices to a kind of religion that we worship.  We want to see the tiny underdog win, and so much the better if she shares our nationality.  Who cares how a gymnast wins, as long as she fights for gold?

We still have to agree what the problem is.  There is no internationally agreed definition of abuse.  Abuse is relative.  Levels of domestic violence in Russia are unknown.  People, generally, don’t talk about it.  In China, many people believe that hardship in childhood is essential to turn out responsible, strong adults. 

Abuse is a time-bound concept.  What was acceptable practice in the classroom, family or gym twenty years ago is not the same today.    Society has taken steps forward, at different paces in different countries.  

Even in the field of human rights and child rights – which you would consider fundamental – there is no internationally enforceable law.  Countries opt into signing agreements and can be shamed into acting to reduce human right infringements.  But what sanctions are available to enforce respect of international law?  Why should sport be any different?

Social media gave a voice to individuals and enabled the ‘Me Too’ generation and the current discussion around how we can protect athletes.  So far, however, that discussion is only taking place if you can speak English.  If we want global solutions to global problems, we need to talk globally, and everyone has to be involved.  But not everyone agrees that there is a problem to talk about.

 Perhaps the most powerful tool we have to combate abuse in sports is to continue to talk about it and to break down national cultural barriers.  To come to an understanding.  No single rule change will create a globally safe sport environment until we can all agree what sport means, why it is important and how we decide where strict training finishes and abuse begins.  No matter the age of the athlete, this is the Big Question.  

Looked at another way, sport can provide a channel to work out our collective global attitude towards the rights of others.  Gymnastics' problems do not exist in isolation but are a manifestation of our society.

Elizabeth Booth, 22nd November 2020

My Olympic Hero

How will I name my hero in a sport full of heroes, in a Games full of heroes – in a world full of heroes?

The whole pretext of the 2020 Olympic Games is unique.  Globally, the Covid pandemic made the Olympics a fearful, questionable, celebration of global survival, a memorial of so many lost.    The Tokyo Games asked as many questions as it provided answers.  Could we afford the luxury of an in person gathering to celebrate athletic achievement and to act out world harmony?   At our first ever digital Olympics, how would the sport, the competition in the field, act out?   

Our sport – artistic gymnastics – began the Games with an enormous dark cloud overhanging.  Sport in general has become too big for its boots.  Political, social and commercial issues far outweigh the wellbeing of athletes.  The IOC, FIG, national federations, coaching and medical consortia have forgotten and abandoned their responsibility for athlete welfare.  Sport has become commodified and its amateur roots have been lost.  A massive power imbalance now exists globally.  The clearest evidence of this is the physical and emotional abuse suffered by the American gymnasts while under the care of the USA Gymnastics Federation, USAG.  This has turned into a global sporting catastrophe as we question the whole basis of elite sport and its win-at-all-costs mentality.  The villains of this piece are the administrators, publicists, coaches, doctors, journalists, dignitaries and fans who have quietly allowed unkind practices, and lowered their eyes when abuse was in plain view.  The heroes of this piece are, as always, the athletes who behaved themselves with such dignity as they lived through their nightmares, told their stories, then faced their fellow competitors with such warmth and generosity back on the competition floor, or wherever they lead their lives today. 

The words ‘hero’ and ‘Tokyo Olympics’ can’t be spoken without mentioning Simone Biles.  Of course, Simone is the real hero of these Games for the honesty and transparency of her withdrawal, for the natural joy she showed in supporting her fellow athletes from all over the world, and simply for showing us that world record breaking athletes are only human, after all.  Simone shows us the true spirit of the Olympics (international peace and friendship) and I think her influence was seen on the competition floor as gymnasts shared joy in their sporting achievements, whether they won a medal or not. 

We, the gymternet, deserve mention as we move into another phase and become established as part of the sport.  One of the characteristics of these Games has been the diversity (style, nationality and/or ethnicity, ability) of the competitors.  We have all been able to celebrate the achievements of our favourites; my personal high point was to see Rebecca Andrade medal in the AA and win the vault final after so many years in the shadows.   Gold medallists in the women’s sport came from Russia, USA, Brazil, Belgium and China, in the men’s sport from Russia, Japan, Israel, Great Britain, China, South Korea.  This year we all seem to have been able to find something to celebrate – is it that we are so grateful to have some sense of community again after so long in isolation? 

One thing I didn’t like so much was the number of times gymnasts broke down in tears after their routines.  I don’t like the thought that the stress and pressure of the Olympics led to so much pent-up emotion.  Tears of joy are one thing.  Competing at an Olympics is surely the high point of any athlete’s sporting career.  But tears of despair on the Olympic floor seem to me to be inexpressibly sad, especially from ones so young.  Perhaps I am just not being realistic here; but I wish there were a way that sports competition could be rendered more positive for the majority of competitors who don’t medal, or maybe don’t even make a final, or finish last.  You won a place to compete at the Olympics, you finished in fourth place in a final, you completed your routines, you turned up and you trained really well, these are all things to celebrate.  Every athlete at every competition is a winner.

So, finally, who is my Russian Olympic hero, the one whose contribution I want to elevate and celebrate and make a noise about?  Russia found itself in an enviable position this year: it won both team finals.  The last time this happened was in 2008 when China won double gold on home ground; before that, the Unified Team in 1992 (but there was only one Russian woman and one Russian man on each of these teams).  This year, the Russian men won the team gold for the first time in 25 years (1996 was their first ever team gold, when the gymnasts arguably had benefitted from the legacy effect of training with the Soviet Union).  The Russian women won gold as a team for the first time ever in my lifetime. 

These victories represent huge psychological breakthrough moments for the teams, and in both cases gradual changes in the coaching teams have made a difference.  Valery Alfosov is now the national coach for the men, Olga Bulgakova for the women, and in addition to their personal coaches at home the gymnasts are supported by large and continually evolving teams of specialists and medical staff at the national training centre.  While Andrei and Valentina Rodionenko still remain in place (and no doubt had a huge influence on the way the coaching teams have developed), it is plain that fresh approaches have made the difference.  Self-belief and prioritising the team, more than individual chances, are at the heart of Russian gymnastics for now.  I am expecting that Andrei and Valentina will both receive huge recognition and reward from the Russian Government over the coming year as they gradually back into Honorary roles and, hopefully, a long and healthy retirement.  Andrei has held the reins since 2006, at a time of great change in the sport internationally and locally, and has established a good team morale where gymnast welfare and health have been a priority.  He has mentored a new generation of young coaches with fresh energy to transform into a modern, innovative and powerful team what could have become an aging and ailing system.  At the same time as sports participation levels in Russia have plummeted, there has been development and investment across the regional gymnastics powerhouses of the largest land mass in the world.  Russia could not even compete at this Olympics in its own right as it became a pariah-state following the findings of mass, state-sponsored doping in certain other sports disciplines.  Gymnastics has kept a clean slate through all the years of Rodionenko’s leadership and now looks ready to keep fighting. 

So there is significant reason for Russia to celebrate in gymnastics, and I’m going to have two heroes of Russian gymnastics this year, one for MAG and the other for WAG.  For MAG my choice is David Belyavski.  You all know the story of the men’s team gold: how Artur Dalaloyan showed immense courage to compete with a barely-healed Achilles tendon in order to help his team to gold; how Nikita Nagorny showed his best for the team and roared like a lion when his final score gave Russia the win.  Truth is, they are all heroes, but Belyavski is my hero: for always turning up and competing at his best, and often beyond his best; for being the light, quiet gymnast of enormous style and perfection, the lithe cheetah in a team of fierce and fearsome tigers.  For being a captain, a gentleman, a cool and calculating leader of loud, aggressive youngsters full of ambition.  For providing foresight and a strategy on the competition floor, and lighting the fire of motivation when panic could easily have set in.  For not complaining one little bit when his place in the AA was taken away by a younger, injured team member; for saying ‘sometimes it’s just not your day’ when he left his individual finals without a medal.  For giving his gold medal to his little girl, Alyssia.  Belyavski is my hero, because he’s an Olympian, through and through, and the team matters to him more than anything.  Because, at the age of 29, he wants to keep training and competing.  He is a hero for all times, past, present and future.

My second hero, for the women, is Viktoria Listunova.  It’s a hard choice, because Angelina Melnikova too deserves recognition for her long-term contribution and the amazing work she put in as team captain.  Slava Urazova, my ‘Boguinskaia’ of this team, was the best lead off gymnast Russia have had in many years, and deserves significant acclaim for her steady, well performed and expressive gymnastics, so unique in this age of the sport.  But Listunova is my choice of hero, she is the one who has stolen my heart.  Listunova because she is the youngest one, and the one in the end who gave her all when her team needed her.  Listunova because she stepped up onto the beam at the most pressured moment of the team final and gave the Russians their best score on the apparatus, when other Russians would have surrendered.  Listunova, because she performed the most forgotten, but most memorable, floor exercise of the team competition to put Melnikova into the right place to win the gold for the team.  Listunova, because she didn’t complain about missing the AA final at all, even when her performances made her a favourite for the gold medal.  Listunova because her potential for medals on bars, beam and floor all make her unique.  Listunova because she dances on floor when others so often only pose; for her hands and arms, so expressive and mobile.  For her little face, so strong and determined.  For all the medals she will, hopefully, fight for in the future.

And for Russia, who remain my favourite team, in my favourite sport, for all time …

This is a time when sport and politics are inextricably interwoven.  It's a sad day when I have to say that I can't support Russia's participation in the Olympic Games, but Russian gymnasts are paid by the State, and sport is used as a mouthpiece for the Russian state.  

It's not a personal matter, and I don't want to get into personal condemnations or accusations.  The gymnasts are Russian.  They aren't bad or horrible people, but they do live in a different and rather difficult environment that shapes their opinions.  The BBC's Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, spoke recently in The Observer about Russia's support for the war, and concluded that while a minority of the population were fiercely in favour of the war, and a similar minority strongly against it, the majority were probably just very confused about what was happening and didn't know what to think.  The gymnasts likely DO support the war, at least partly because they have to for their own safety.  They are high profile and don't have the luxury of expressing confusion or simply fudging their personal views.  Most probably they can't get out of the country without being stopped and questioned, so joining the Russian diaspora isn't an option for them.  At the same time as allegations of their behaviour are highly upsetting, there are questions about them that we cannot answer.  Yet another reason that the IOC should simply ban Russia from the next Olympics, or at least until such time as there is peace and allegations can be fully and fairly investigated.    

Not surprisingly, friendships have been destroyed.  The idea of Russia competing side by side with Ukraine is unconscionable for many.  The IOC has to make a decision; that decision should be made on a country level and not on the basis of individual behaviour, because you can't fairly judge individuals in a time of such unrest, in a country in which everything is being turned on its head.  It's not an easy decision to make with so many different ethical concerns.  I appreciate the IOC considering neutral status for some athletes.  But Russia has well and truly crossed the red line and I think the simplest decision -to ban Russia - is the right one.

I keep writing about Russian gymnastics because I am concerned for the athletes and their coaches and I also want there to be peace.  But it is difficult to write appropriately about what is going on over there without talking about the politics.  As I can't do this with any degree of real knowledge (even the national and international press struggles and there are issues of bias - both ways), I wanted to draw attention to a growing body of work on the internet - the vlogs that Russians are producing that give an insight into their country's situation at present.  These are not about gymnastics or sport, but they help to shed light on what is happening in Russia.  You have to read and listen critically - I am not vouching for the reliability of these as sources, they are simply ones that I enjoy and that, after months of listening, I have found to be interesting and reasonably balanced.  Please note, I pray for both Ukraine and for Russia.  What is happening at present is a violation of Ukraine - and of Russia.

The first source I would recommend to you is a vlog called Inside Russia.  It is run by a journalist, Konstantin, who began his vlog while still in Russia and now broadcasts out of Tashkent, having fled Russia at around the time of the first draft.  Konstantin has a record of accurately predicting what is happening in Russia and he understands the language of the Kremlin.  He broadcasts regularly, sometimes daily, and runs livestreams and Q and As.  If you are interested in the situation in Russia and only have time to listen to one source, I would recommend this one to you.  

Nikita Proshin vlogs about travel and knows a lot about how to travel cheaply, and how to keep visas up to date!  He was in St Petersburg at the time of the invasion and very bravely broadcast live from the protests against the war that erupted at around that time but which now seem to have been quelled.  He can be interesting, especially in analysing important geo-political and economic issues.  At times it's more of a travel vlog.  You can pick and choose his videos according to your interests.

Viktoria Terekhina is a Russian who travelled with her husband and growing family from her home in Krasnodar via Uzbekistan to Georgia, around the middle of last year.  Her vlog is mostly about how the family is living and settling in to a new country, but in common with most of these vloggers she also runs a Patreon account.  And it's the stories on Patreon that are really important, recording as they do the actions of this remarkable family as they settle in a foreign country.  

A Different Russia is a vlog about the everyday life of a Russian couple who live with their black labrador Sheffield (Sheffy) in Fryazino (a small town just outside Moscow where gymnast Maria Bondarenko comes from). There is an insight into the quiet lives of ordinary Russians here that is difficult to find elsewhere. War is heavy in the background with talk of supermarket shelves, bureaucracy and so on, but the War is never directly spoken about,  

Finally, if you, like me, want to travel to Russia but can't because of the war, I'd recommend the vlog Matt & Julia.  Matt (British) and Julia (Russian) are a married couple who travel not just around Russia but also across Eastern Europe,  the Caucasus and Asia.  Julia (a former contestant in the Great British Bake Off) is a cook, so there's quite a lot of talk of food and some really nice home cooking with her grandma in Keremovo, family parties at New Year and so on.  I've enjoyed videos of M and J travelling by train to the world's coldest city (Yakutsk), and of them narrowly avoiding arrest by the KGB while visiting the ruins of an old Soviet missile testing station in Dagestan.  And through their adventures I've developed an interest in Kazakhstan and in particular Almaty, which looks amazing.  If I can't get to St Petersburg before my faculties begin to fray, I'll have to go Almaty to satisfy my travel urges.  

There are others, but I won't overload this page with too many recommendations.  If you have any favourites of your own, please do mention them in the comments.  I'll be coming back to check them.  

With the European Championships taking place this week, there is one thing on my mind - gymnastics.  And the big question for me is - will Russia be able to take part in the Olympics?  It's looking increasingly unlikely - Europeans were the last chance to qualify as a team, and of course they aren't in Antalya this week. Russia has been invited to participate in the Asian Games, but this doesn't appear to be a valid route to qualification as a team, either.  The only chance may be for gymnasts to qualify individually - but with an FIG ban on all Russians at international competition, this looks unlikely, too.

We are all waiting for a decision from the IOC - can Russia be at the 2024 Olympics?  Yet it seems to me that this option has already been ruled out.  I get the impression that the four leading MAG in Russia - Nagorny, Dalaloyan, Ablyazin and Belyavski - have all but given up on the possibility.  Their demeanour seems almost to say, 'what kind of Olympics will it be without us?'.  

I agree.  A gymnastics competition without Russia is like beef without salt.    And since when did politics matter to sport?  I am old enough to remember South Africa's exclusion from the world of culture and sport - but that was because teams and audiences were segregated - you couldn't participate in sports without endorsing the very political policy - apartheid - that made South Africa so unwelcome in the international community.  There is no similar sporting discrimination in Russia, nor does supporting Russian sport make you a supporter of the war against Ukraine.  So why involve the IOC and the other sporting federations?  Their job is to make sports work, and to promote harmony between nations and people, not to make judgements about international politics.

And why pick on Russia?  Other countries have made aggressive interventions in places not their own.  For example, Britain got involved in Iraq not so very long ago; the USA was involved in a very controversial war with Vietnam.  Olympic exclusions were never suggested for these countries.  

You might say: sport is a state sponsored activity in Russia - you would be right, and President Putin does use it shamelessly to promote investment and interest in his country.  But don't we all?  I can't think of any leading country that doesn't have some level of state interest in its sporting machine, and that doesn't like to leverage sport in some way or another, as a way of promoting tourism, a way of disseminating national values.  And some of those state interventions have been incredibly undesirable - for example, the way that the FBI failed to investigate allegations of abuse in USA gymnastics.

So why even involve the IOC, the FIG, why even ask the question : 'should Russia participate in the Olympic Games?', in view of their unprovoked act of aggression against Ukraine.  Sports is surely a mechanism for the good; it promotes interest and friendship in other countries, exactly the kind of bonding that is needed in a time of war.  And the contumely that we are throwing at Russia at the moment is very one-sided, isn't it?

What do you think?  Please contribute an article if you would like to argue your point of view : send it to me at elizabethbooth136@btinternet.com.  

Travelling back in time to 1985, all 15 of the top spots in the women's all around competition at the European Championships were taken up by Eastern European countries who were part of what was then called the Soviet bloc.  The Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria were all in the mix.  Spain's Isabel Soria, 16th that year, was the first gymnast from the West to appear on the results sheet.  Event finals were an exclusively Soviet Bloc affair.

38 years later, we see this turned on its head almost completely.  True, we have Hungary's Sofia Kovacs in second place, and the Romanian team is making a return with its gymnasts, Anna Barbosu and Amalia Ghigoarta, in 9th and 10th place; but otherwise gymnastics is entirely Western.  

Britain did look dominant from the very start, and Italy are their closest competition.  The gap between first and second placed Italy was almost three points; it was a similar situation between second and third, then the standards evened out with some very close competition between places four and seven: Belgium, France, Romania and Hungary.  

The competition to qualify for the individual all around shows a range of just over four marks between the gymnast placed first, Britain's Jessica Gadirova, and tenth placed Amalia Ghigoarta.  With one point being taken for a fall, and wavering D scores, that isn't a huge gap and the placings could easily vary tomorrow.  

This hasn't happened suddenly, obviously; but the absence of Russia has made the change much more visible, and asks the question - what will gymnastics be like without their leadership, technical, artistic and competitive?  Well, we will have to see.  

A small point that I know is going to annoy some of you.  Russia - Urazova and Listunova, then Melnikova - did crack the wolf turn on beam and floor.  Do you remember the time when a wolf turn was basically nothing more than an opportunity to groan with horror?   Some time before the last Olympics - not a moment too soon - the Russian choreographers took it on themseleves to address this problem, training first the best juniors (Urazova and Listunova at the time) to perform the skill well. Posture, lift, technique over power, leg extension - they actually managed to transform the wolf turn from horror to beauty.   The change involved conceptualisation, planning, technical knowledge, skill, and probably a good deal of teamwork.  This is only one example of where I can see standards slipping without Russia to lead the way.  Who else bothers to refine their movement to a point of perfection?

There is a very real chance that the developing Western hegemony of gymnastics will become lasting.  Many of you will welcome that, and I understand from a sporting perspective that it's great to see Britain, Italy, Belgium win, and to have really interesting competition on the day.  But gymnastics has always been a bit more than that - there is that element of artistry and innovation that is so important to its identity.

I can see Russia slipping away from gymnastics for a very long time, never to be retrieved; where will the money and motivation come from, if they can't compete internationally?  Who will have the ideas, who will lead the sport, without the mighty Russia, its scale, its power, its heritage, its sporting intellect?  

Please, do comment.

In view of the Russians' absence from Europeans, I thought it might be interesting to look at the top three scores at 'their' competition, the Belarus Cup, and make some comparisons to Europeans.  Hmph.  I'm not sure it is possible to make comparisons between the marking in one competition and another, actually ... but for the sake of interest, here are some of the key scores.  Does anyone want to do some technical/critical breakdowns of the scores?   Are the standards comparable?  How would the 1, 2, 3 at Euros be affected, if at all, if the top Russian or top two Russians had been present in Antalya, and all gymnasts scored consistently?

Videos of the Europeans are fairly easily available on Youtube.  If you want to see videos of the Belarus Cup, there are some available on Telegram, on the Karelian Gymnastics channel.  I'm not sure that I can link to them.

It would be interesting to know what you think, in any event.  Please leave comments!

The fundamental premise of this blog is as a monitor and observer of all that happens in Russian gymnastics.  In as far as you can like a whole nationality, I like Russians and Russian culture.  I do not like the Russian state's use of violence against Ukraine; (nor do I like the use of violence by anyone in any context). 

This was the first blog to take a regular view of aspects of Russian sport, from the perspective of the developing narrative in the Russian press.  Often the stories told lack resonance with what is commonly accepted about Russian gymnastics.  There are assumptions about the sport in Russia that are accepted in the West, but challenged by the Russian gaze, and Russia's view of its own place in the sport is often challenging, and difficult for us to understand and appreciate.

In a similar way, the stories we read in this country about the War come from a heavily influenced Western perspective; our media lacks criticality in its treatment of this developing history.  We read the Russian narrative as biassed, without questioning the bias inherent in our own; and we tend to accept Ukrainian accounts as gospel.  We want there to be black and white, and we want to be on the right side.  

Our narrative is that Putin and the Russian state lit a powder keg in Ukraine, and that our military support is there to defend the Ukrainian people.  Ukraine is fighting for its life and has every right to defend its independence; seen in another light, however, you could say that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war against Russia, on behalf of the West.  I'm not even going to try to defend this idea, but it is a position many do hold.  This War is far more complicated than it is presented in the British and American press, and there is a duality of right and wrong that is difficult to argue.

I believe that Russia's war on Ukraine is unprovoked and that it violates the rights of all the people who are directly and indirectly affected by it.  Both Russians and Ukrainians are hurt badly by the aggression and military action.  In February, UK Intelligence estimated that Russia had lost about 70,000 soldiers in Ukraine.  President Zelensky put it closer to 110,000, while the Ukraine military recently updated it to 150,000.  Each country estimates the others' death toll as higher than the other will admit to; Russia says that Ukraine have lost about 157,000 troops, while the Ukrainian government estimates casualties between 10,000 and 13,000.  And of course in Ukraine, the civilian death toll is horrible.  

Russia is directing its aggression against its own people.  It is estimated that around one million Russians have left the country since the beginning of the War, and few of them will return home.  For those who did not have the means or courage to flee Russia, conscription is inevitable.  Fewer and fewer people can escape the invitation to participate in war, that is now being sent via a computer app and is assumed to have been received once sent. 

Since March 2022 it has been illegal for Russians to express dissent against the War.  There is a hefty fine for doing so, and the threat of a prison sentence.  This is in the context of a country that can make up its laws as it goes along.  Today, anti-War activist Vladimir Kara-Murtza has been sentenced to a 25 year jail sentence for speaking out.  President Putin's closest political rival, Opposition Leader Alexander Navalny, is languishing in an isolation cell in a prison in Melokhovo, 115 miles east of Moscow.  News of his health is scant and unreliable, but it seems he is ill, and it's suspected he is being administered poison. Russia is not a safe place and speaking out against the war is not to be recommended.

Nor, indeed, is it likely that ordinary people have much choice about whether they publicly support the War, or how they do so.   For a Russian, supporting the War is probably assumed to be a default position.  For an athlete in an unstable authoritarian state like Russia, declaring yourself 'neutral' is probably the same as protesting against the War, carrying similar risks as openly declaring dissention.  Athletes have relatives, jobs, they have business interests.  All of these can be targetted if an athlete shows reluctance to support the state.

A blacklist is doing the rounds at present, produced by an organisation related to the Ukrainian Government, or perhaps the Government itself.  Russian athletes and entertainers who have supported the war are being sanctioned; in many cases, for example, athletes are forbidden from travelling to Ukraine for a period of fifty years.  I'm unsure what the criteria are for inclusion on this list or who makes the judgements, or where they get the information from, or who checks the data.  I'm unsure what the point is of sanctioning individual athletes and entertainers as opposed to any other segment of society.  It seems unjust and unfair both in process and outcome.  Two wrongs do not make a right.

We, too, as followers of our sports, should not be targetting individual athletes in the current situation.  We should not smack our lips when we read of such sanctions and say 'they deserve it'; we don't know that they do deserve it, and correct processes of justice have not been followed.  Isn't it enough that athletes who have spent their lives preparing for these Olympics will be unable to compete with the best on a world stage?   Let me say it again.   Two wrongs do not make a right.

Russian vlogger Niki Proshin explains the new draft laws in Russia -   https://youtu.be/NMuIhAFmQPo

Link to President Zelensky’s office website https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/2282023-46529

Link to Ukrainian Press announcement of the sanctions : 

https://sud.ua/ru/news/ukraine/256645-rada-odobrila-personalnye-sanktsii-protiv-futbolista-timoschuka-i-sportsmenov-rf

There is that little face: the face of a child.  Brown eyes, contemplative eyes, eyes that stare at you emotionlessly, a little defiantly.  Dark rings; she is tired, she could sleep for hours.  Young Nadia looks as if she has been crying.  She is a child.  If you found yourself with responsibility for her, you would make her some hot milk, give her some cookies and put her to bed, not send her to train with the toughest coach there has ever been, or force her to have her photograph taken.  

The metal chains around her neck give away that she has achieved something momentous.  The font declaring her name at the top of the book's jacket, 'Nadia Comaneci', appears in a light golden shade.  As you glance at the design, you get the impression that the gymnast is wearing a golden crown, a laurel wreath perhaps, something to match the Romanesque features.  She could easily be posing for a portrait.

You see the words 'Secret Police' in a deeply authoritarian blue.  You know that Nadia didn't have an easy time of it in Romania.  You know that there have been stories of her country's human rights record, that other athletes have squeaked about their treatment as athletes at the hands of the great bear, Bela Karolyi.  Nadia hasn't spoken.  You might suspect her story, you might have read books that pretend to be authoritative.  But this book promises much, drawn as it is from an extensive review of the Securitate (Security Police) and other Government files in Romania.  While Nadia continues to maintain air silence about her experiences in Romania prior to her defection to the West in 1989, this book will be the best source available.  

History involves the evaluation of the various stories available, acknowledging their sources, and resulting in an interpretation of them based on wider context and evidence.  Absolute truth is difficult to find; there is always more than one story to tell.  And you will have to do some work as part of this reading to identify where the gaps and weaknesses are, and make your own mind up.  There are a few small mistakes in this book - ones that followers of the sport will be able to pick up on fairly easily - but they don't really detract from the overall heft.  This book doesn't claim to tell the whole story, nor to provide a quick - tada! - moment of revelation.  But it does address the gaps in the narrative, and asks the right questions about Nadia's life and subsequent defection from Romania.  The point is HOW do we know what we know about gymnastics in that period of time, as much as WHAT we know.  

There are books that you should read to help you to understand the gaps and inconsistencies in knowledge.  Bela Karolyi's Feel No Fear is one of them, and Nadia's own personal account, Letters to a Young Gymnast, another.  Graham Buxton Smither's biography of Nadia provides a framework, and you should also watch the videos of the relevant competitions - in particular the 1977 Europeans, 1978 Worlds, 1979 Worlds and the 1980 Olympics.  

Everyone knows the rough story of Nadia's gymnastics career - the perfect tens in Montreal, the uncomfortable adolescence and suicide attempt, then time in hospital during the 1979 World Championships; her coach's defection in 1981, followed by her own dramatic defection to the West in 1989, only a few weeks before the collapse of the Romanian state and the murder of the evil despots, the Ceausescus. 

Comaneci was one of the world's greatest athletes and is written up in most books as a formative part of gymnastics history.  Yet look at the statistics and it's quite surprising.  Nadia's competitive career spanned six years and a bit, from the 1975 European Championships to the 1980 Olympics.  She also won the 1981 Universiade, but we never really make much of that for some reason.  In addition to the ground breaking tens she scored in Montreal in 1976, Nadia also won three consecutive European Championships; this was at a time when Europeans were almost as important as Worlds.  But she never won an all around title at a World Championships, and only won one individual medal (beam in 1978).  Her original moves are limited to those she invented on uneven bars, and unlike her close competitors from the Soviet Union, Loudmilla Tourischeva and Nelli Kim, she has never held a leading position on the FIG WTC or similar.  

This is not to denigrate Nadia's influence on the sport, and her achievements - far from it.  It's just to say that, for the most talented gymnast I have ever seen, her laurels are somewhat scanty; and this book explains why.  For Nadia was so cruelly treated by her coaches and by the Romanian state, that it was extraordinary that she managed to survive at all, let alone compete in the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and almost win a gold medal all around.  Her impetuous flight from her country took phenomenal courage, and is astonishing.  

Another aside.  As a refugee, Nadia's story is not exceptional.  Think of the desperation involved in escaping your own country, the physical courage involved in boarding a boat or crawling across miles of mud.  This book has a wider resonance with current affairs, and not only because it is published at a time when West and East are once again finding distance.

Karolyi saw the genius of Nadia Comaneci, and stole her for himself; not to create a legend for her, but to create power and money for himself.  Not only did Karolyi concoct the story about his discovery of Nadia in an Onesti playground, he also rewrote her gymnastics history almost entirely.  He was not Nadia's only coach, nor was he the only coach of the Romanian team.  He coached Nadia for perhaps four or so years, not long when you consider it takes ten to create a champion and fifteen a legend in gymnastics.  He was so cruel to Nadia, both emotionally and physically, that eventually she refused to work with him.  His methods included verbal abuse, physical beatings, starvation and dehydration.  

Finding herself off his very tight leash opened Nadia up to possibly worse privations at the hands of the state, whose agents were terrified that she may abscond, give up gymnastics, or, worse still, put on a few pounds in weight.  She found herself hemmed in by police who monitored her every move and noted down when she took food from the fridge in the athlete's hotel where she lived.  Her friendships were even poisoned; Bela tried to suggest that compatriot Teodora Ungureanu, who was close with Nadia at the Montreal Olympics, tried to encourage Nadia to eat and to behave badly in order to make her own life easier.  

The reason, then, that Nadia did not achieve as much as one might have expected of a gymnast of her stature and abilities is because her physical and mental state suffered so much under Karolyi's system that she was too ill and broken to train.  Her physical state at the 1979 World Championships - indeed the poor health of the entire Romanian team - was down to overtraining and a hellish programme of exhibition tours directly before the competition (which rivals said were designed to generate income for the coach), that exhausted them, reducing them to an almost skeletal appearance.  Karolyi, it is said, tried to blame Nadia for her own health problems, an infected wrist that saw her hospitalised overnight.  The story of her 'realising' her responsibilities as a team mate and jumping up on the beam to rescue the Romanians is false.  No one in that condition should be performing elite gymnastics.  Karolyi commanded Comaneci to compete on beam not to help the Romanian team to win, but in the hope that she would perform so badly that she would destroy her own reputation.  

The one single thing that really stands out for me in this book is how spirited and strong Nadia Comaneci was, and is, to survive the treatment she went through.  Her silence speaks volumes.

I should also add here, entirely personally, that Karolyi of course went on to recreate exactly the same horror of a gymnastics state in America. Within three years he was claiming credit for Mary Lou Retton, AA champion at the 1984 Olympics; within ten America had its first World Champion.  It took another thirty years before the West started to believe the gymnasts' stories of harm and abuse.  This is not the subject of this book, but it does tell the back story of how the whole of America was taken in by a bogus coach who sold a promise of medals at the cost of minors' misery.  He did it twice, once in an authoritarian dictatorship, and the second time in the land of the free.  Shame.

Back to my review of the book.  Karolyi's own defection was met with cheers by the Romanian team, in particular the younger girls.  Emilia Eberle said she was just happy to be able to train without being beaten.  Ekaterina Szabo expressed relief that they would be free of what she called the horror, and could train with the coaches they knew and trusted.  

Yet another aside, I remember that of the six gymnasts in the 1979 World Championships team, at least three (Comaneci, Ruhn and Eberle) needed their appendices removed before the 1980 Games.  Starvation increases the possibility of appendicitis.  As the book says, these girls were starved, and their intake of water was even limited.  The gymnasts say that the beatings and the training were awful, but the worst thing was the hunger and starvation.  While they ate tiny meals of steak and lettuce, Karolyi would tuck into lavish three course meals right under their noses.  This was more than medals-at-all-costs; Karolyi was deliberately cruel.  Other coaches and the doctors expressed concern that the gymnasts were not taking on board the right nutrition, but he was the one who was obsessed with limiting their intake of food.  At times the girls starved completely for days on end.  No wonder, then, that they wolfed down sweets and snacks that others gave to them when they could.

It was a cold, dark and rainy night when Nadia finally made her flight from Romania and the most detailed part of the book is the analysis of the Securitate records relating to the interrogations that resulted from her disappearance.  Nadia was helped by many people and circumstances, including some particularly lax reporting by some of the Securitate who may have been trying to help her.  But in the main, she just got lucky and avoided entrapment by the border guards.  The consequences of being caught would have been terrible for Nadia, but she had already had enough of the limitations placed on her life in Bucharest.  She wasn't especially well off, given that she was paying off debts accrued in the repair of her house in the capital; she couldn't fulfill important roles for Romania in the FIG as a judge or official, because she was largely denied all requests to travel abroad.  If America's CIA had arranged for her to be rescued, it's likely that they would have made far more political points from her arrival in the country than they did.  Nadia just decided that she needed to get out, and she did it quickly and efficiently with the help of some fairly reliable people.  

Only a few weeks later, the Romanian state fell.  Since 1990 Nadia has settled in America, got married and had a child.  She leads a normal life, works and seems to be reasonably healthy.  She is loyal to the country of her birth, visits family and friends there regularly, and although she is friendly and polite with everyone, she mainly maintains silence about the difficult times of her life.  

You should read this book.  While much of the narrative that it recounts is already in the public domain, it adds important detail, in particular regarding the sources, and opens the field for questioning of the narrative.   It is fairly long, and some passages require quite an effort to read., but it is worth the effort.  The long footnotes do add detail; I feel there could be even more referencing to indicate sources for the 'core' stories and help the reader to identify where new material is added.  However, the work is already extensively referenced, and in general it contributes significant new material and insights to the story of Nadia Comaneci and a formative time in gymnastics and world history. 

Sad news - the great Soviet champion Yuri Korolev has died, aged 60.  Korolev was a great coach, very loved by his gymnasts and hugely respected in Russia.  Korolev was World AA champion in both 1981 and 1985, and took the silver AA in 1987.  He amassed a total of 14 gold medals across three World Championships and 3 Europeans.  The sadness of Korolev’s career was that he never competed at an Olympics - the Soviet boycott of 1984 denied him LA, and he snapped his Achilles tendon just before the 1988 Games.  …Yuri was one of a dynasty of champion gymnasts who came from the beautiful city of Vladimir in Russia.  He trained at the same club as Nikolai Andrianov and Vladimir Artemov, Yuri Ryazunov and Kirill Prokopyev.   Nikolai Kuksenkov also chose to train there during his time on the Russian national team.  Russia’s bar coach, Sergei Andrianov reported the sad news.

Yuri was blond and handsome and very modest.  We will miss him and our prayers are with his loved ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGr85BA-iEU

UPDATE, 22.00 

Local TV has confirmed the circumstances of Yuri Korolev’s untimely death.  The former champion and coach was living and working in his home town, Vladimir.  Last night he had a heart attack and was rushed into hospital where he stayed overnight.  He sadly died earlier today.

Fellow coach, Vitaly Ivanchuk, has confirmed that there will be a memorial for Yuri on the 3rd May.  Rest in Peace, dear Yuri,

https://vladtv.ru/society/144142/?fbclid=IwAR3mgFzypdgcofBAvTHMreVLVeOkemzK2vXdWyzffL-VQki_RUp2IBq-SC0

 Source: Russia Today/Google Translate 

Alia, come on. You can": Mustafina - about "nightmares" dreams, coaching career and muscle mass

July 4, 2023, 15:32 Elena Vaitsekhovskaya

It is better for a gymnast to be strong than thin. This opinion was expressed in an interview with RT by two-time Olympic champion in uneven bars Aliya Mustafina. According to her, weight is not a problem at all for an athlete if the muscles are well developed.  She also admitted that she had never been upset because of the competition, remembered the sudden phone call that changed her life, and explained why she did not consider it necessary to force athletes to train.

“I didn’t go into coaching because of a divorce”

- One of your interviews during your sports career was called "I love children too much to be a coach." Nevertheless, you are now leading the country's youth team in women's gymnastics and, apparently, you really like it.

“I really love coaching. First, because it works. And secondly, it looks like it's really mine. Children understand me, I manage to find an approach to each of them, explain even the same mistakes in different words, so that everyone understands what exactly I want to achieve from them.

Your colleagues have already managed to tell me a story, how one morning, before going to the gym, you looked out the window, and there ...

— Yes, it was. The children wrote right on the pavement: “Aliya Farkhatovna, we love you!” Naturally, I was extremely pleased.

For some reason, it seemed to me that after sports, your priority would be family, children, some kind of completely unsportsmanlike life. Moreover, as far as I remember, you really were not disposed to become a coach. When did the priorities change?

- I didn’t work then, I sat at home with my child for more than a year, and one day our head coach Valentina Alexandrovna Rodionenko called me rather unexpectedly and said that she and Andrei Fedorovich (Rodionenko, head coach of the Russian national team. - RT ) really want, to lead the youth team. At first I was very doubtful, worried. There was no experience. On the other hand, just then I thought: why not try? At least in order to understand whether I want to do it or not. I tried. Got sucked in.

- Was the decision somehow connected with the fact that you broke up with your husband?

- No. Alexei and I divorced much earlier, when I was training. So my departure to the coaching profession was definitely not dictated by the desire to get away from some personal problems.

- Tried to understand why, of all the possible candidates for work with the youth team, the Rodionenko spouses chose you?

- The coaches were bribed, firstly, by the fact that I trained for many years in front of their eyes, and trained at a fairly adult age. Even then, I constantly helped all the girls. Plus, our leaders initially wanted the team to have a young, fresh look, which, in their opinion, is always useful.

— I agree. But the same Valentina Alexandrovna is a rather authoritarian person, and I remember very well the pressure you were under when your coach Alexander Alexandrov was forced to leave the national team due to a conflict with the leadership. Was it hard to let go of those memories?

- In fact, I did not perceive everything that was happening around me as some kind of pressure. In the gym, I just did my job, trained.

When some new girls appeared in the team, I did not have any jealousy towards them. It was just a goal to prove that I am not weaker than anyone else. Therefore, I did not see any negative attitude towards myself in the actions of the coaches. Accordingly, after the sport, there were no resentments and thoughts that I want to work with someone, but not with someone.

- How free are you in your actions now?

- If I have any professional questions, I can always turn to the same Valentina Alexandrovna for advice. Of course, we discuss some important points together with her and Andrei Fedorovich. But in the daily work with athletes, there is no such thing that I do something just because I was told to do it. In this regard, I make my own decisions. Moreover, we discussed this point from the very beginning.

- Have your internal coaching ambitions already woken up in you, or is work still perceived as sheer pleasure without any specific goals and obligations?

- There are goals, of course, as well as ambitions, but also pleasure. The only problem is that there are no international starts. Accordingly, it is impossible to compare ourselves with world leaders, to see in which direction and how actively we are moving.

- But after all, the leaders, judging by the results of the last Olympics, were we ourselves?

“There is still not enough competition. If we talk about training, about performances at domestic competitions, the girls' progress is simply colossal. Yes, I watched the youth world championship. Yes, I am not ashamed to say that if we went with our children to this tournament, we would have no equal. But it's all subjunctive, whatever one may say. In this regard, it is a little difficult to work.

It is important for a gymnast to be strong, not thin.”

- At one time, as far as I remember, you had one of the most technically intense programs on uneven bars.

- At the Games in London - no. In Rio, yes. And that's only because I managed to learn new elements two weeks before the competition.

- Are the combinations that your wards are doing now more difficult?

The combination that I did on the uneven bars in Rio is now considered to be basic. That is, if a girl performs this set of elements when moving to an adult team, then her bars are not bad. But there are athletes who do more difficult things.

The junior team is also puberty. Is it necessary to try to bring female athletes to the maximum level of difficulty before they begin to grow and take shape?

We have such a task. I always say: while the child is small, until he begins to grow up, while he is light, you must learn absolutely all the elements. Yes, perhaps before puberty it will be one combination, and after - a completely different one, but in any case, the gymnast will be able to do everything.

If you recall my own experience, I was 18 years old when I competed at the first Olympic Games. It turned out that the peak of my growing up fell on an earlier period, when I was recovering from an injury for almost a year. I then recovered greatly, but at the same time I still worked, worked, worked and worked. And she returned to the hall no longer a little girl, but an adult.

- Was it difficult to transfer the old children's skills to an adult body?

- No. But this is just because I had a good base of elements since childhood. Remembering and restoring them turned out to be much easier than learning something new.

And you never looked overly thin on the platform.

- I was very strong. That is, all my weight, even if it seemed unnecessarily large to someone, was made up of very well-developed muscles. Therefore, it was easy for me, even when, with a height of 163 cm, I competed with a weight of 57-58 kg. I would even say that being strong in gymnastics is better than being thin. You have to drag your body and turn it over.

Are you an observer coach or a practicing coach in the gym?

Probably more practice.

Yes, we have very cool specialists, but you still have to work on all the apparatus in one way or another. As the saying goes, one head is good, but two is better. Plus, I'm now completely driving the log. This, of course, is insanely difficult, I really lack a specialist on this projectile.

Can't manage alone?

- I really can't. Because there are three more types of all-around. If someone deals a combination at the other end of the hall, I, working on a log, must have time to look both ways at the same time and notice all the mistakes.

Do you have to yell at children?

“In general, we have a fairly trusting, honest relationship with them. Even without shouting, they perfectly understand who is the coach here and who is the athlete. At the same time, outside the hall, we can always talk on various topics, laugh. I think it's good.

With regard to work, I have long developed a certain position of my own. If something doesn’t work out for an athlete, you first ask yourself: have you done everything to make him succeed? Did you see and explain all the errors, did you find all the approaches. As a rule, I don’t shout at all in the hall, but I can say something very loudly when I see that someone in particular is stupid. When, for example, the girls are pumping and forgot which stations they should go to. A loud voice works well in this regard.

When you said almost ten years ago that you loved children too much to be a coach, I was sure that at that moment you were going through your own and not always positive experience. When the coaches constantly yelled at the athletes, insulted, stamped their feet, took away food...

- Yes, and they beat sometimes. It is clear that this was a long time ago, even before I got into the national team, but I also came across very tough children's coaches, looking at whom I understood very well that I myself did not want to.

- But after all, in gymnastics for a long time it was believed that there was no other way to make a result.

- Has anyone else tried it? We are trying.

- Agree that parents, as a rule, raise their children the way they raised them. If someone has been slapped for any offense, it is likely that over time the person will begin to spank his child in the same way. Coaching work, I think, is arranged in a similar way.

- Probably, a lot depends on what examples are in front of your eyes. I began to think about this when, after the Games in London, we started working with Evgeny Grebenkin. Most recently, he was remembered with Ksyusha Afanasyeva. She now works as a choreographer in our team, and she said about Grebenkin: “This is the person who made me love gymnastics, although I hated it all my adult life.” Evgeny Anatolyevich never shouted at us, did not force us, but long and patiently explained why it was necessary this way and not otherwise. It was then that a very strong restructuring began in our brains.

I definitely wouldn't be able to become a politician."

- Do you remember your own career as absolutely successful or as unsaid?

I don't regret anything, that's the main thing. Firstly, I won a lot of things, and secondly, I stopped downloading the bad ones. That is, whatever the situation, I chose the pluses from it and thought about them. So everything worked out perfectly.

- What are you dreaming about now?

- To have as many good children as possible in gymnastics. To have someone to choose from, whom to train. For them to compete with each other. To make it interesting. And, of course, I really want international competitions.

I sometimes sit and think: we have girls born in 2008 who now would have a very real chance to get into the main team and go to the Games in Paris. What if there is no Olympics? To wait for the next Games is four more years of work, but what is four years in gymnastics? Well, you're already old. Therefore, we are trying not to train our athletes for a momentary result, but to instill in them a love for what they do. So that even at the age of 20 it would be interesting and fun for them to train.

- I absolutely understand why a huge number of girls go to figure skating. The sport has been heard for several years, everyone wants to be like Alina Zagitova or Alexandra Trusova. But gymnastics has always been a rather chamber sport. Children who are now coming to gymnastics understand why they need it?

- I think so. At first it's just a game, then when they get into our hands, we try to do our best to continue to maintain interest in training. Now all our children are enjoying the training camp, they all want to come again and again, they want to train. I think it's already good.

- In comparison with your generation, have children become different?

- They are modern. They have a different upbringing, different music, different interests. One Internet is worth something with tiktok and everything else.

- I hope they don’t take selfies on the balance beam during training?

— No, in this regard, everything is strict with us. I constantly say: if you are doing something, you should do it 100%. It is clear that it happens that someone is lazy or does not want to do something, does not really strain, but even in these cases I do not scold girls. I just call them to me and explain that I don’t need them to do gymnastics because I don’t want to. I know too well: if you don’t want to, no one will ever force you. And here is a small example. I ask: “If you want to go to the toilet, do you run there as fast as you can? So it is here: if you really want to do gymnastics, you will go and do it. Everyone is thinking.

I saw in some video how you drive your daughter along a log. Is she with you all the time?

- Alice came a couple of times with me to the collection. This happens only in those moments when parents are not in Moscow. That's when I take my daughter to the "Round". Then I take it back, and the parents take care of the child again.

- Do not you feel a guilt complex about this?

- My mother and I somehow initially had an agreement on this matter, when I was still training. I remember that the pregnant woman asked: “Mom, will you sit with my child?” She says, "Of course I will." She replied: "Well, then I will work."

- Many years ago, at the Atlanta Olympics, I witnessed how a very young wrestler Vadik Bogiev won a gold medal and announced right on the mat that he was ending his career. He then told me: “Life is what happens around while we are making other plans. I don't want my life to pass by." What makes you, an interesting young woman who has won everything that was possible in sports, limit your own life to the rather narrow framework of the “Round Lake”?

“Maybe it’s still love for children. I really love them all so much, I want to help them so much, to give as much as possible, that it turns me on, or something.

- Do you have enough time for yourself? Doesn’t it pull at least sometimes to get beyond the boundaries of the profession, relatively speaking?

“Definitely not now. Yes, and I don’t complain about my life yet, everything in it absolutely suits me. I wanted to rest so badly when I finished performing that I spent a whole year at home with great pleasure and did not even try to look for a new job. I switched to completely different concerns, completely moved away from sports. Probably, it was necessary in order to make an absolutely conscious decision to return to the hall again.

- During this time, you were not offered to go into politics, to some public organizations, to become a deputy, for example?

- Somebody, but definitely not a deputy. Dad said that with my character and hypertrophied sense of justice, I would be kicked out of there very quickly.

- Your sports age fell on a period when there were a lot of outstanding figures in gymnastics. Which of them, in your opinion, has really changed this sport?

- Svetlana Khorkina, Alexei Nemov and, probably, the generation of Mikhail Voronin, Nikolai Andrianov, Alexander Dityatin. I can’t single out one person, but I think that it was the Soviet generation that gave a very big impetus to the development of world gymnastics. Plus our absolutely outstanding coaches.

The result is always a combination of efforts. It is impossible to separate that here, for example, sports success, and here - coaching. It's just that there are always fewer coaches. Now only fans of their work generally work in this profession. After all, I know approximately how much coaches in the regions receive. I know what it takes for them to come to the training camp, because each such visit is immediately minus the salary. And still, people come, live for their athletes, live for gymnastics. I'm not an exception.

Do you dream of your own performances at night?

“Fortunately, no. Now more often I dream that we are coming to some competitions, where it suddenly turns out that someone cannot perform, is ill or has not arrived. And the coaches come to me: “Aliya, come on. Can you…”

Original article can be found at - https://russian.rt.com/sport/article/1169414-mustafina-intervyu-trener-ves-deti?fbclid=PAAaYBm23aFqpZgN90uWcf44PGy4Fh-9SpPU3m130qElCRvxPrxbQZwZVFHOg_aem_AU3ODnL5dqpecMRvSa1u8F6TxT6UQWmLG2AegW1QheKsZqeIwRFlOFIA2UUlWr48Muc 

That’s a bit premature, I hear you say!!

Gymnastics evolves by practice, informing ideas that develop into more practice.  Leadership of the sport takes place in competitions large and small, international and domestic.  This is then formalised by the various technical committees who write up the new Codes of Point, which in turn encourage the shape of gymnastics.  

What you see in competitions is the outcome of work by many different gymnasts and coaches around the world, interfered with by the process of taste distinctions held by a few people sitting around a table in Lausanne, or wherever the meetings are taking place.  

If one component of that process changes, then the ‘taste distinction’ stage of the process also changes.  When the American women were dominating the sport, tastes shifted in favour of powerful tumbling and precise execution. Judges can only mark what is on the table, and so this kind of shift develops into a sort of ‘echo chamber’, emphasising and overemphasising the growth of a particular type of gymnastics.  

It takes quite an amount of energy to shift the sound and power of that echo.  We’ve seen that beginning to take place in the contributions of the Dutch team to performance quality in the floor and beam exercises.  The Olympic team champions. Russia, took this a step forward in Tokyo with their powerful tumbling combined with excellent dance - and, most importantly, they won - which further empowers any style influence.  

The men’s sport was gripped by a tussle between the elegant, technically powerful Japanese and the crazy pyrotechnics of the Russians.  At that time, the Russians were dominant.  They created such a noise it made it difficult to judge what other gymnasts were doing.  They blacked out the work of all but the most dominant gymnasts.

This seems to me to have been the eternal dynamics of gymnastics since the day I started to observe it, over 50 years ago.  Discussions of taste have perhaps become more public and arguably more democratic with the advent of social media, but there have always been swings and counter swings in the identity of the sport, initiated in shifts of power played out in competition and the boardroom of the FIG.  

Gymnastics has become more tangible and less whimsical in those fifty years.  Public debate of taste included poetry in the Soviet Union, all those years ago, when we considered whether the banning of the back somersault on beam would ‘forbid [Olga] to fly’.  The gymnasts were observed as a product of their training environment and coaching;  in women’s gymnastics we saw the Svengali-like operations of Shtukman, Knysh, Ratstorotsky and Karolyi bend and shape gymnastics in multiple directions, technical and artistic.  We saw the interplay of power dynamics as the less vocal, more integral work of the mostly female choreographers had its silent but elemental influence on the structure of routines and the manner of their performance.  

In women’s gymnastics, it is quite probably this, the quiet work of the choreographers, that had the greatest public impact on the appearance of gymnastics.  The work of Sokolova, Kapitanova, Rassina and Ganina are all strong influences on Soviet and Russian gymnastics.  Yet they are all women, and few of them experienced the same incentives to travel and work overseas as their male counterparts.  Their influence on gymnastics is gentler and less easy to articulate; easier to judge than to evaluate.  More vulnerable in a system of codifying and calculating scores.

The wall that is currently being constructed around Russia is a tragedy for culture, sport and international friendship.  Its construction is the consequence of too much power being held in too few hands, and the desperate fight for more and more power by people who don’t care what misery they cause for the rest of us.

Russia is the largest landmass in the world, yet its population is small and rapidly declining.  Most of its wealth is in the hands of a few people.  It’s incredibly difficult to lead a normal life in Russia.  Standards of living are poor.  Virtually the only democratically shared success of Russian life stands in the realms of culture, art and sport, and even that is littered with corruption, cruelty and nepotism.  Putin, and the Russian establishment, began to ruin Russia’s sporting accomplishments a few years ago with the ridiculous, needless and systematic doping of champions at the Sochi Winter Olympics.  This began the process of isolation of Russian athletes that has continued to this day, and finds its current expression in the barring of Russian teams from the Olympic Games, as a result of the ridiculous, needless and tragic war that Russia started with its neighbour, Ukraine.  

Russia is losing countless people because of this war.  Hundreds of thousands have been killed.  Still more have migrated in search of a better home.  The longer this war persists, the fewer reasonable people remain in Russia.  The only people left, apart from the poor and powerless, are the powerful and wealthy, whose only aim in life is to become more powerful and wealthy; they don’t care who or what they destroy in their pointless acquisition of gold.  They don’t care if Russia is reduced to a boggy war field full of trenches and bomb damage; they can go and live in Texas, or Paris, or London.

And the athletes and coaches will suffer, because despite Putin’s love of sport, sport will not be a priority.  Sport cannot thrive without competition.  Competition cannot exist when there is no friendship.  Putin did some great things for sport and for Russian society in general, while it lasted.  But he threw it all away when he opened the Pandora box of greater power and wealth and false glory.  

There will be an impact on international sport, and especially on the ‘artistic’ sports, where the form of the sport is constantly evolving and influenced by the various power dynamics.

In gymnastics, it will take some time for  this to become clear.  The Russian diaspora will hold up the influence of Russian taste distinctions on the sport for a while.  The great champions will show up on the internet and make us happy.  We still love them.

But eventually, gymnastics will lose Russia, and miss Russian power at both political and sporting levels.  When the Soviet Union fell apart, its effect was to dissipate the total influence the USSR had on the sport at all levels.  This influence continued to be shared by the former Soviet countries, mostly Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.  It was Russia who followed the ambition and kept the gymnastics faith to fight for the lead in the sport.  They had just (2021) stepped up to the highest spot on the podium when the Russian leadership decided to implode.  

I pray for Ukraine every day; peace is the only possible outcome for their suffering.  Ukraine wants and deserves peace. 

I also pray for Russia.  Russia fervently needs peace, it needs strong leaders who can offer its population normal lives.  It needs friendship.  But it shrugs its heavy shoulders and turns away.  With Putin, Russia has a war with Ukraine which to many poorly informed and poorly educated Russians is morally ambiguous.  Ordinary Russians feel little responsibility or power to change this.  Without Putin, Russia goes from bad to worse as the Warlords battle for its possession and exploit its resources, including its population.  

I doubt we will get our Russian athletes and their coaches back.  Their absence will be strongly felt.  Without that intangible charisma, gymnastics will become another sport again.

Today, I got a nasty shock when someone commented on a Facebook post of mine about a Russian woman gymnast.  ‘She’s pro War’, she declared, perfectly confident in her assumption, well up in her understanding of what pro War means, and thoroughly without doubt in her grasp of the context and likely rights and wrongs.  Totally blind to the fact that in her eagerness to label another person ‘pro war’, she was actually revealing herself to be ‘pro war’, even if she is on the ‘other’ side, so presumably it’s ok for her to be that way.

But first I thought and I reflected on what the comment said - have I missed something?  Is the perfectly nice-seeming young woman in my post really a warmonger, an advocate of horrible, arbitrary violence?  Does she really want to see her country and her neighbours suffer and die? 

I don’t think so.  It’s doubtful that she will have the same viewpoint on her country’s war as we do; it is doubtful that either of us has a totally clear view of the circumstances; but pro war?  I don’t think either of us swings that way.  

I still post about the Russians;  I think it is more right to keep in touch than it is wrong.  There are some gymnasts who I exclude from my posts because I think they may have crossed the line militarily, and I don’t want to alienate anyone.  But overall, I think there is every reason to maintain our relations with ordinary Russians and to continue to try to understand their culture.  

Even though we are at war with Russia, one day we won’t be.  War is about states and leaders, and I’m an ordinary citizen.  I don’t like killing and destruction and cruelty and I would rather be friends with someone.  It seems to me that the only way I have of battling war is to promote friendship, which is so much more constructive and so much more something I can do than lob a hand grenade at my supposed enemy.  Friendship beats war every time.  

What is war?  A state of military action by one country against another.  Death, destruction, injury, bereavement, destitution.  No one in their right mind would support that.  There’s some philosophy out there; most wars are wrought by men.  It’s believed that men turn to war because their bodies lack the ability to give birth to a new life and lack the complexity of emotion and experience that is involved in dragging a screaming baby out of yourself and growing it to adulthood.  I digress.

So, do I know what pro war is?  A state of an individual supporting death and destruction against others, based on a nationalistic perspective.  

Do I think that the gymnast concerned is pro War?  No.  Would it matter if she were prowar?  I wouldn’t like to support a murderer, but I think she is probably far more likely to be a pacifist.  Does she have a Russian nationalist perspective?  Yes, most probably; you would too, if you were Russian.  I can support a situation where a friend holds a different viewpoint to mine.  

Do I think she wore the ‘Z’ at a rally? Possibly, if she were asked to do so by the office of the President of Russia (athletes have been sent to prison for speaking out against the war).  

Do I think she supports President Putin?  No idea, I’m not a mind reader - and neither are you!  

My conclusion - friendship beats war hands down and it is the only thing that can outlast the horrid violence that’s going on in Ukraine - and in Russia - at present.  Apart from a few professional tennis players, Russian athletes probably won’t get the opportunity to compete in Paris, and few will even make it to international competition.  The athletes are in the front line of sanctions made by the west against Russia, and the banning of athletes from international competition affects their daily lives more perhaps than any other ordinary individuals apart from those who have been conscripted, or those who have been forced to, or chosen to, migrate.  

It’s all so complicated that most sporting bodies haven’t even made a decision about whether Russian athletes can compete in the Olympics. In my opinion, most athletes will be excluded by default.  

Sanctions are about Russia the state and its corrupt system of oligarchy and politics and finance, not about ordinary individual athletes.  ‘ProWar’?  Why would they be?  War has robbed them of their livelihood, their lifelong dreams, their purpose, their vocation.  Quite probably they have lost family members to the war, either through relatives in Ukraine, or through conscription or through migration.  

To my readers, if you talk about pro war, please think about what you are saying.  Please don’t be self righteous and judgemental.  You can’t possibly know if someone is pro war, and it’s highly unlikely that they are.  This horrible situation is beyond summing up in two tiny words.

I pray for peace for Ukraine - and for the ordinary people of Russia.  

Aren’t we all just pro peace, in the end?  

Angelina Melnikova, now 23, is 2021 World AA champion in artistic gymnastics.  She holds a gold medal with her team from the 2020 (2021) Olympics, her second Games.  Visit her home, and no doubt there would be a secure cabinet full of all the various honours, awards and medals she has earned through her career.

Angelina Romanovna Melnikova has her primary home in Voronezh, the place of her birth.  The club where she trains is the same one where champions Viktoria Komova, Vera Kolesnikova and Liubov Burda made their names.  1980 Olympic Champion Elena Davydova began her gymnastics life there, too.

Melnikova is untypical of most Russian gymnasts.  Her first Olympics, in 2016, were characterised by uncharacteristic mistakes that came in the wake of a nasty hamstring injury.  As the youngest gymnast she seemed unsure and tearful - but still helped her team to a silver medal.  

A Russian gymnast beginning so inauspiciously might have been expected to wither and disappear from the competitive scene.  Did Angelina follow that model?  No.  After a year of struggles, she picked herself up, brushed herself down, and started again - with a different coach, an arrangement she made entirely independently and with good grace.

Gradually the medals she received tallied upward and onward, until Angelina became one of the leading competitive gymnasts of recent years.  Her career total (so far) of nine gold medals across major internationals exceeds that of compatriot Ksenia Afanasyeva and is all the more creditable for being secured in the era of Simone Biles.  Melnikova began her career competing in a team with Aliya Mustafina, and now finds herself shoulder to shoulder with potential world leader Viktoria Listunova, by far the strongest Russian gymnast in a generation.  

In the difficult atmosphere of war-time Russia, Melnikova can no longer travel the world to defend her titles.  Her response is typically pragmatic and productive.  During her preparation for the 2016 Olympics she balanced her life by taking classes in Italian and English.  She also had her own business designing leotards.  Now she has opened a private gym in Voronezh.  All of this work is characterised by a mature, responsible and creative outlook.  

Melnikova is now preparing for the Russia Cup, due to take place in late summer.  Her participation in international competition is doubtful.  She practises wisely, with respect for her body.  A recent Achilles injury has been hard to overcome.  She works alongside childhood coach Natalia Ishkova, who has always given Angelina the emotional and technical support she needs.  As you’ll read later in Angelina’s own words - formed by Google translate -  the Russian Gymnastics Federation does not consider Ishkova a senior enough coach to travel to the national training centre, Round Lake.  Since Ishkova can’t train bars, she is barred from Krugloye, despite the fact that her charge led the Russians to their first Olympic team medal two years ago.  

So in Moscow, Melnikova is training without her beloved personal coach.  She isn’t letting it get to her.

She’s training a double double dismount from uneven bars.  Angelina lets her gymnastics do the talking.  Good luck at the Russia Cup, Gelya.  

On her social media recently Angelina has been reflecting. Her words reflect a heartening take on the new philosophy of women’s gymnastics, one that you wouldn’t necessarily expect a Russian to adopt, partly because of the language barrier and partly because of the patriarchal attitude of many in the sport.  

If you are familiar with the latest thinking, you’ll recognise the themes.  I am proud of Angelina Melnikova.  She is a leader in so many walks of life.  Courage to you, Gelya.  

In chronological order, lightly edited, Google translations.  Pictures from Angelina’s own Instagram account.  

‘I really really dream of someday seeing a champion gymnast who trains and does it consciously; gymnastics not under fear from the coach, but on their own. 

I dream of seeing a mutually friendly tandem of a coach and an athlete where the boundaries of individuals are respected’

‘It’s very hard when the coach wants a result, and the athlete either doesn’t understand why he trains, or gets tired of training, and this causes an emotional swing. This is a very common problem, I don’t know about others, and so many athletes disappear because of this. Dozens. Every year. So sorry.  All the same, if the coach is wise and smart, he understands that each person (athlete) needs his own approach, both physical and emotional, and mental, and athletic.  Everything is individual, and the coach adjusts to his ward, and then everyone can shine. This is the professionalism of the coach.’

I never really know whether to cover news about Nikita Nagorny.  He and his wife Daria Spiridonova are internet influencers; high profile vloggers who live a particular lifestyle.  Nikita is friends with the son-in-law of Sergei Shoigu, Russian (now discredited?) Defence Minister.  It was presumably this connection that got Nikita the title of (honorary) head of Yunarmia, the Youth Army, which is the equivalent of our (UK) scouting organisations, but with some fairly strong militaristic and patriotic connections; as you would expect in an authoritarian state where repression is at an all time high.  Nikita was appointed to this position before the most recent wave of attacks on Ukraine, although it is worth remembering that the attacks have been ongoing since 2014. 

Nikita comes from Rostov, in the south of Russia, not far from the border with Ukraine.  It’s not unlikely that he has friends and family in Ukraine.  Many Russians share Ukrainian ethnicity in their families; Russia is a very diverse society.

Earlier this year Denis Ablyazin’s partner posted proudly on Instagram that Denis, Nikita, David Belyavski and Artur Dalaloyan had clubbed together to buy a drone for Russian troops in Ukraine.  Then everything went quiet.  If this is true, it’s direct military involvement that could have cost lives.  And that’s definitely not good.  But it’s for the IOC/FIG to investigate this, not for us to speculate. 

Who knows what Nikita thinks of the war?  Whatever people say, Russia is a scary place right now.  Few want to go public with their thoughts on the war and probably for Nikita and Dasha even more is at stake because they are so high profile.  In that sense, it’s quite creditable that they have remained as neutral and silent on the war as they have.  In terms of Nikita’s activities with Yunarmia: how could he resign or refuse duties without giving a big slap in the face to the Defence Minister?  With so many Russians going missing, or falling out of windows right now, visibly dissenting by resigning a position or even failing to show for an event could be very dangerous.

The sanctions - including the banning of Russian athletes from the Olympics - were designed to target Russia economically, in particular the Oligarchs who were presumed to support President Putin.  They were also supposed to prevent Russia from gaining the profile and morale benefits of sporting victories, and to communicate to ordinary Russian people how undesirable their state’s actions in Ukraine are, in the hope that this may ultimately bring about regime change (whether this would be for good or bad is a moot point).

The sanction in sports so far has been - no international competition for Russian athletes.  And in a wider sense, while that hurts me as a lifelong follower of the sport, I think it is probably right.  

But at an individual level for the athletes it is really harsh.  Who are we to judge individuals in what must be one of the most difficult situations in their lives?  To have their livelihoods denied them, their whole lifestyle and friendship networks disrupted?  

I also believe that there are other ways of seeing this.  Sport means friendship and rivalry.  Respect between nations and individuals.  In breaking up friendship connections between countries, we are actually accentuating the isolation and polarisation of opinion that leads to and is a consequence of war.  

We can condemn the Russian state for its horrific violence without losing our respect for and enjoyment of Russian culture, and that includes sport.  Our ‘friendships’ with the gymnasts and their coaches, both virtual and personal, are still important strands that hold together our international society and give us perspective through life’s difficulties.  

Put simply, love will always be stronger than war.  Our friends might not be able to speak out, might not be allowed to contact us any more, but we can still hold the faith, keep the candle alight, and remain loyal - until such time as we can speak again and face reality, for good or for bad.  

There is the possibility that the IOC and FIG may find a way for individual neutral athletes to compete - but it will take athletes of exceptional courage to declare themselves neutral in today’s Russia. 

With all that in mind, I’m still undecided about Nikita and his connections - do they cross the line into direct military involvement?  I’m going to say that we can’t judge; let’s leave that to those who have access to the whole picture.

I’ll compromise in Nikita’s case.   I won’t post his pictures here, where most recently he has attended an event where Svetlana Khorkina spoke about the challenges for athletes in deciding when and how to retire.  I will say, however, that sadly, Nikita  says he is considering retirement from the sport.  He has always said that he wants to stop at the right time, and he is obviously feeling very dispirited at present.  

It’s not a final decision and I think he is preparing for the Russia Cup, but finding it rather heavy weather on a motivational level.  Which is sad for such a fierce competitor.

God bless this mess.  Let’s pray for Ukraine, and for the ordinary people of Russia (Nikita is one of them); let’s pray for the Russian people to find strength and courage to press peacefully for change - and get out of Ukraine.  

 I am just recording here some notes on a media interview with Russia’s MAG team captain.  David uses quite a lot of rhetorical questions here in his responses, and parries as the interviewer tries to get closer to his thoughts on the wartime ban in international competition, and the idea of competing as a neutral individual.  

Read this in the context of what we know about  growing repression in the Russian Federation.  This could well be considered to be a historic document on wavering freedom of speech in Russia as the country approaches the nightmare of total mobilisation to support the war in Ukraine.  

I’m sharing this from my Facebook post.

Quite an interesting interview with David Belyavski.  He is very skilled now at speaking in public.

He says he hasn’t lost motivation because of the international ban on Russian athletes, he loves gymnastics and will continue for as long as he can be part of the national team.  He likes coaching but has no particular plans to take up work at present.

He doesn’t intend to compete under a neutral flag; he has already done this once.  In his opinion there is no chance of Russia sending a team to the Olympics.  The requirements set for individual neutral participation are not easy for athletes to meet, for example they have to pay their own travel expenses.  Gymnasts from Dynamo and CSKA are disallowed.  Changing nationality isn’t workable in the time frame before the Olympics and besides, why would a gymnast who had trained and lived in Russia all their life want to change their nationality?  Competition is less interesting without international gymnasts present and during such competitions as Euros, the gymnasts watch and want to be there.  But they can’t and who knows what the situation will be for the 2028 Olympics? 

His condition now is good, but not top - he saves that for the Olympics.  Daniil Marinov is good but needs some international experience and to strengthen his content on all the apparatus but specially pommels and floor.  His p bars and vault are already good.   

The gymnasts are being paid the same as they were when they were competing internationally and the Federation is looking after them well.  

https://metaratings.ru/blog/intervyu-olimpiiskogo-chempiona-po-sportivnoy-gimnastike-davida-belyavskogo/

Paraphrased and edited version  from a Google translate.

There is a real sadness in the retreating shadow of Russian Olympic sport and especially in the loss of our connection to individual athletes, even if it has been a somewhat distant, virtual connection.  Russia was in the process of becoming a relatively more open society, less fearful and more spontaneous than in our lifetime before. Now we hear individuals toeing the ‘Party’ line.  We know from years of familiarity that these people are natural, warm and hospitable, yet the evil shadow of war robs us of that human closeness.

I’m praying for Ukrainians, Russians and all of us everywhere who are living in fear right now.  May we find peace and value love above all else.