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| Can the Russians replace frowns with smiles next year in Rio? |
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| Alla Sosnitskaya limped off the floor yesterday |
I suppose that if you were looking for an obvious reason for this failure, you would point a finger at the many errors gymnasts made - and floor was a particular bogey. Poor Alla Sosnitskaya suffered painful falls to her shins and knees on three of her tumbles, Seda Tutkhalyan shot out of the floor area after her middle pass, and Maria Kharenkova had some good tumbling but still suffers problems of direction in her middle pass. Compared to their nearest rivals, the power and difficulty of Russia's tumbling looks relatively meagre. Grace and expression - particularly evident in Spiridonova's work - can't substitute for acrobatics under this particular Code of Points.
Russia's floor problems are well known, but they do not entirely account for the country's current weakness in the all around. The team does have potential to do better, but not all gymnasts are available to compete for the team this year. Mustafina and Komova are both outstanding all arounders, capable of leading the Russian field, but 'not ready' to compete all around at the World Championships, says Rodionenko. In other words, perhaps, none of the new generation of gymnasts has been coached to live up to the standards of the veterans. Or, could it simply be that the well of Russian talent has run dry?
I doubt it. I do however think that the sport has changed significantly - the era of the 'flair' gymnast, for example Khorkina, is over. Assiduous discipline and rigour are now more important than balanced, all around virtuosity and originality. Precision over rules expression. A sport that once favoured painterly technique and imagination is now ruled by the sporting equivalent of a slide rule, tick box menu and digital calculator. The Russians are still second or third in the world, but to an extent they have lost their way as they attempt to follow a sporting coda that is not their own, and to which they are culturally unsuited. Fire and passion, a certain charismatic unpredictability, has always been part of Russian coaching and gymnastic performance, but these are difficult qualities to manage when funders expect medal guarantees and when scores are calculated systematically rather than judged intuitively. Cooling the fire only damps down the Russian genius for performance and drama that fuels so much of their sporting success. Russia needs to lead, not follow.
To show creative leadership, and hence to win, the team must find its confidence once again, creating a new way of using the Code of Points to best artistic and acrobatic advantage. Rodionenko as Head Coach is the person to make this happen. He is a great manager, but as a leader he has so far fallen short of finding the central motivator for these gymnasts and coaches that will transform the Russian interpretation of this Code of Points into something they can manipulate, exploit and conquer. Russia believes in mystical powers of leadership and creativity, in bravura performances grasped from the edge of oblivion, and will only rule gymnastics once again if it does so absolutely and on its own terms. Silver is objectively outstanding at any level, but Russia only understands gold. In coolly predicting that the team will achieve silver at best at Worlds, as Rodionenko did recently, he is revealing the steady conservatism and outstanding management that made him such a successful Head Coach in Canada. Under Rodionenko's kind, moderate administration Russia will always do quite well, if that is good enough.
I do not think that this Russian team has performed as poorly as many other observers have said.
The looks on the faces of the gymnasts and coaches (see picture above) says much about the gymnasts' own evaluation of their performances, but in many ways they did show improvements that will help them to accumulate more points in the World Championships. There are some good specialists - Afanasyeva, Paseka, Komova, Spiridonova amongst them. Tutkhalyan shows immense courage and ambition, especially on beam, and looks to me like a real little fighter. Angelina Melnikova could be the next big thing for Russia in the all around, but she still can't match the all around totals of a fully on-song Mustafina - or Komova if she decides to try all four again. Those gymnasts who trained on the totalitarian team led by Alexandrov are still outstripping their junior partners.
Perhaps the floor was hard; perhaps this competition came at the wrong time of the training micro-cycle. There could be all sorts of reasons for under performance, and there are many reasons for optimism. The minimum performance for the Russians in Glasgow will be to finish in the top eight, and therefore qualify automatically as a team to the Rio Olympics - nothing else really matters. In Brazil, I think, we will see the full potential of this team. But Russian gymnastics won't be Russian again until the team grasps the nettle of its own creativity - and shows another way.