She considers herself Belarussian, although she lived in Kazakhstan until 1977 and now resides in Belarus, the US and Switzerland. To be more precise, Nelli Kim has no home in the country of watches, banks and cheese, where she spends many months every year. Yet, her soul is in Belarus, whose colours she defended during the last years of her fabulous gymnastics career. Five time Olympic champion and world champion, she was recently in Minsk to brief Belarussian specialists on the new aspects of the next Code of Points. — The Code of Points will be enacted in 2013. The judges will receive new categories, she explained. I decided to come first to Minsk. To whom do I have to explain the nuances of the new Code other than Belarussian specialists? I’ll meet with coaches and judges; we’ll talk about new trends in artistic gymnastics during the new quad. It’s a pleasure to meet again people with whom I have spent so many years in sport. Every one of my visits is not only work, but satisfaction from meeting people significant to me. In October you were re-elected for the third time as President of the FIG Technical Committee … — Yes, for the next four years I will be the President of the Women’s Technical Committee. I’ll be responsible for the Olympic competitions, the World Championships, the Code of Points , the judging, the assessment of the judges’ scores at tournaments, sanctioning judges. — Could you be more precise on this last topic? — My function is to supervise the scores of a gymnast’s routine. At the end of any championship, we gather and, after a computer assessment, we score the judging of every judge. If someone has not worked well, we sanction her with a red card and we suspend her from the next championships. — As far as I know, the suspension of a judge is not an easy proceeding. The Disciplinary Commission interferes. — It is created within the framework of the FIG and comprises three jurists and three gymnastics specialists. We tell them our conclusions and the members of the commission decide upon a judge. We are amateurs. It’s not about business; it’s sport in an amateur sense. — Do suspensions happen often? — After the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo, two judges were suspended. One of them was a Romanian who won an Olympic medal. The Committee decided to suspend them for the London Olympics. Moreover, they will not be allowed to participate in the intercontinental course next year. They will not obtain the D elite category responsible for the most important tournaments. — What is this intercontinental course about? — The course will present the new guidelines in judging, that we’ll start applying in the new quad, including the 2016 Olympics. All the concerned persons, indlueint the Belarussian judges as well, must take the course, sit for exams and obtain a judging category. There is now a fight to take part in this process, to influence the trends in gymnastics. — Could you share with us the innovations in judging [the new Code of Points]? — We shifted some elements from one group to another, depending on their popularity in the competitions. If an element is often performed, it’s not difficult and it should score less. And, on the contrary, if it is less performed, it means it’s difficult and deserves more points. We pay attention to connections, and still to artistry. We plan to introduce big deductions in floor and beam. We invited representatives from Cirque du Soleil, who trained our specialists how to understand and assess artistry. Тhis happens for the first time. Never have there been so many deductions in this direction. The understanding of art, of music by the judges is more necessary than ever. But there is subjectivism and there will be. Everyone interprets beauty in their own way. But we’ll try to assess something subjective with objective criteria. — How is that? — You’ll agree with me that a part of artistry is the body’s position, a music well-suited to the routine, fluid transitions from one part of the routine to the next. — Don’t you think that sometimes gymnastics competitions become a noisy mess. The audience, not pleased with the scores, create a real scandal. Under their influence, the judges meet, change the scores, and the winners change. — At the last Olympics, this happened in the men’s competition, when a Ukrainian gymnast lost bronze in a pommel horse routine. Men’s judges have more serious problems than we have because there’s less control over the judges. The men’s Technical Committee was chaired by Adrian Stoica, from Romania, but he decided to stand as a candidate for President of the FIG and lost. Bruno Grandi was re-elected for the fifth time. Later, Stoica was candidate for the Men’s Technical Committee, but he lost again. The president of the men’s committee is Steve Butcher, the first black president in the history of the FIG. — To come back to the scores in gymnastics, skating officials have found a way out by including a system of points for the execution of an element, for the level of complexity. — We have the same system as skating, yet I think that their approach is not good. They drop scores that help assess the situation. We rule out the lowest and the highest scores and we take into account the average scores. They can rule out these scores and keep the highest and the lowest. What we have in common with ice-skating is that the difficulty elements are classified according to a group from «А» tо «G», аnd now we have also included «H». In the score this is reflected by 0.1 to 0.7, and now 0.8. If gymnasts do a triple back on floor, and, of course, land on their feet, they can get the highest bonus. So far the women don’t go for this extreme, while the men have been doing this for a long time. When they competed, Valeri Liukin and Sergei Kharkov performed those elements excellently! — Apart from the seminar, you had time to meet Vladimir Karpovich, President of the Belarussian Gymnastics Federation. — The unforgettable Vladimir Ilich [Lenin] once said that personnel solve everything. This statement is still true today. If there are no coaches, even with the best equipment, there won’t be results. The passion for gymnastics exists in the Belarussian, Russian and Ukrainian peoples. After finishing their careers, many athletes became good coaches. Right now, most of them former Soviet citizens, are coaching our rivals in the US, Аustralia, Canada, France. Salaries abroad are from 3,000 to 5,000 US dollars! I was pleased to see that the president of the Association fiercely wants to help gymnastics, He wishes to know my opinion in order to improve the situation. Our meeting was very fruitful. — Your daughter lives in the US. Where are you more often, in Belarus or in the States? — Half and half. My ex-husband is a cyclist, Valeri Movchan, a Moscow Olympics champion. He lives in Minsk. My daughter finished her studies at a business school in Chicago and she now wants to study medicine. However, she doesn’t give up amateur sport; she practices different activities.
Мikhail DUBITSKI | 