It has been a long time since I reflected on Russia and its gymnasts, but there have been some significant events recently so here is an update.
1 The continuing depletion of the national team reserve.
MAG head coach Valery Alfosov has stressed that although the men's team appears to be thriving at present, this does not reflect a complete turn round in Russia's fortunes. There are concerns that the longer term development of the team will be erratic.
Conditions in WAG seem highly uncertain. The national team relies on maintaining its veterans to ensure the appearance of being in contention for individual medals. Without Paseka and Mustafina the team would have only Ilyankova and Melnikova as gymnasts of medal potential. Furthermore, the measure of Mustafina is purely reputational. There is little evidence that she will return to competition at her previous level, and promising her appearance at the European Games could end up being little more than a favour to Russia fans anxious to encounter her much fabled competitive charisma.
Team success in gymnastics is about more than talent or the emergence of individuals. Strength in depth underpins the ability to maintain competitive profile and visibility as well as to cater for times when leaders are struck by injury. Russia is still an important gymnastics power internationally, but it does not have the same scale, volume and focus as it once had. Comparisons to the former, far larger Soviet Union, lead to a sense of disappointment about the prospects, but the changes are about more than mere numbers, and there are underlying shifts in attitude which perhaps add to the feeling of anticlimax that surrounds gymnastics in Russia at present, in particular WAG.
Female gymnasts no longer emerge as first year seniors to take the world by storm, as they did in the 1980s and early 1990s. World Champion in 1981, Olga Bicherova, began a pattern that sparked off similar early career victories from Shushunova in 1985, Dobre in 1987 and Zmeskal in 1991. In general, female gymnasts now take longer to establish themselves as seniors and win their first medals, and have longer career spans, choosing specialist or all around roles for themselves. This reflects changes in the sports rules as well as changing morals in the nature of training and competition, that in turn are reflected in the state-coach-gymnast power relationship. Russia has yet to adapt to this reality and loses a lot of promising juniors in the transition to full senior participation.
Many in the Russian-speaking community argue that this relates to the easy availability of money for those training on the national team. The rewards are adequate enough to encourage mediocrity, and travelling to the odd competition with friends is enjoyable at a certain level of engagement. Why tolerate increasingly hard training for a tenuous opportunity to win big?
This may explain the situation to some extent, but it goes beyond that to a general cooling down of the social climate in respect of the importance of sport. While Russia's sports dinosaurs are hardwired with the narrative of gold at all costs, their passionate words, rooted in a proud past, cannot be matched by a current social and sporting climate that is more about comfort than victory. Add to that the recent feeling of international isolation and mistrust brought about by the WADA mishandling of Russia's doping record, and there is enough to discourage real pride in a country's record in sport. Russia is not a rich country and the opportunity to earn a good living is enough in itself.
2 The flaking infrastructure
While conditions at the national centre, Round Lake, are good, the regions still struggle to maintain sufficient funding and focus to keep their facilities and coaching up to date. In the past twelve months major gymnastics centres in St Petersburg and Leninsk-Kuznetsk have been under threat of closure, or are temporarily closed while refurbishment takes place. This is not all bad. Some areas have experienced a renaissance, eg Rostov on Don which is the home of Nikita Nagorny, Maria Kharenkova, and several other national team members. It is, however, clear that the emphasis on the 'centre' does not provide continuity in the feeding of new talent onto the national team. While the provenance of gymnasts on the men's team is diverse, the women's team is now dominated by around half of its gymnasts who come from Moscow, St Petersburg and its surrounds.
The average age of the national team coaching staff is now younger than five years ago. There are regular changes in the personnel, for example, the recent appointment of Konstantin Pluzhnikov as bars coach. Valery Alfosov, who has been head coach of the MAG team for many years, has now established himself as a passionate leader: he is dry, supportive and visionary. The WAG coaching team is supportive, but seems to have little in the way of vision, leadership or passion.
3 The gymnastics
Soviet gymnastics was all about style, imagination and innovation. Those principles have re-established themselves in the leading MAG Russian gymnasts over the past few years, to the point that there is the potential for real medal success at the next Olympics, if we are lucky. Nagorny is the fiery, do-it-at-all-costs leader; Dalolyan has real style and deftness; Lankin is the emerging genius. I love to watch them compete, and the respect they pay each other and their rivals.
WAG in general is at a low point currently. It is great to watch competitions and to see the way the girls interact with each other; to see how the gymnasts strive to outdo themselves and each other over time. But there is little of excitement in the developing form of gymnastics. The gymnasts are not disappointing, but the Code allows them little encouragement and freedom to develop the sport creatively. The same tumbles and turns are in evidence on the floor and beam, vaulting has gone backwards for the majority of all arounders, and bars routines seem interchangeable. There are always exceptions, of course, but overall the sport has lost its way. The sport needs leadership to overcome the current impasse and re-establish variety, virtuosity and balance. At present artistry and power have become divided. Power outranks artistry. The best gymnastics is a combination of both.
Artistry and power are not mutually exclusive and a pattern for the future needs to be established. There is a gap at the top of WAG for someone to take a lead. Why not Russia?
In the desperate grab for medals in an increasingly competitive sport, Russia has forgotten itself. Its sporting and cultural identity has always centred on the imposition of a graceful style and elegance within the form of whatever practice it is undertaking. During World War 2, Shostakovich transmitted an emotional performance of a symphony, composed and played in St Petersburg during the blocade. Surrounded by blood, death, famine and unimaginable suffering the Russian cultural capital produced some of the most beautiful and moving music the world could imagine. Why? 'We wanted to prove that despite all the suffering we were not just surviving, but that we had maintained our culture, that we were more than surviving', said one witness. In the same way, Russian sport, Soviet sport before it, has often overcome the boundaries of sporting competition to become an artistic form of sport. The Soviet ice hockey team of the 1980s won many medals but they didn't just impress with wins; their play was mesmerising, creating intricate patterns of play that could be enjoyed in the same way as dance. And the Soviet and Russian gymnasts also created art from the earlier discipline and military traditions of world gymnastics.
Russia still has the delicacy of touch that can make for beautiful, watchable gymnastics: think of Dalolyan as one who combines this with the necessary technical aplomb and difficulty to be a world beater. On the women's side, Elena Eremina and Angelina Simakova both embrace the elegance of the Russian tradition. They are typically Russian, and in many ways the best that Russia can produce, the gymnasts who reflect Russia's gymnastics heritage and identity. But they cannot perform the difficulty needed to consistently win medals at world level. Russia's best is not good enough at the moment. In the context of a sport that has lost its way, Russia has bolted and followed the crowd, abandoned its tradition of excellence in the pursuit of power and difficulty. Has lost sight of its true strength, technical gymnastics performed with elegance, gymnastics that transcends itself.
Boris Pilkin found a way to create gymnastics for his slight, skinny athlete, Svetlana Khorkina, that together with her technical brilliance and sheer will power made her into a legend. What Russia now needs is another coach, another Boris Pilkin for example, who can construct routines for gymnasts like Eremina and Simakova, Russia's finest, that will eventually become a model of leading gymnastics for the world to follow. It will be a precarious path. It will take at least a decade. Who can do this? When?
1 The continuing depletion of the national team reserve.
MAG head coach Valery Alfosov has stressed that although the men's team appears to be thriving at present, this does not reflect a complete turn round in Russia's fortunes. There are concerns that the longer term development of the team will be erratic.
Conditions in WAG seem highly uncertain. The national team relies on maintaining its veterans to ensure the appearance of being in contention for individual medals. Without Paseka and Mustafina the team would have only Ilyankova and Melnikova as gymnasts of medal potential. Furthermore, the measure of Mustafina is purely reputational. There is little evidence that she will return to competition at her previous level, and promising her appearance at the European Games could end up being little more than a favour to Russia fans anxious to encounter her much fabled competitive charisma.
Team success in gymnastics is about more than talent or the emergence of individuals. Strength in depth underpins the ability to maintain competitive profile and visibility as well as to cater for times when leaders are struck by injury. Russia is still an important gymnastics power internationally, but it does not have the same scale, volume and focus as it once had. Comparisons to the former, far larger Soviet Union, lead to a sense of disappointment about the prospects, but the changes are about more than mere numbers, and there are underlying shifts in attitude which perhaps add to the feeling of anticlimax that surrounds gymnastics in Russia at present, in particular WAG.
Female gymnasts no longer emerge as first year seniors to take the world by storm, as they did in the 1980s and early 1990s. World Champion in 1981, Olga Bicherova, began a pattern that sparked off similar early career victories from Shushunova in 1985, Dobre in 1987 and Zmeskal in 1991. In general, female gymnasts now take longer to establish themselves as seniors and win their first medals, and have longer career spans, choosing specialist or all around roles for themselves. This reflects changes in the sports rules as well as changing morals in the nature of training and competition, that in turn are reflected in the state-coach-gymnast power relationship. Russia has yet to adapt to this reality and loses a lot of promising juniors in the transition to full senior participation.
Many in the Russian-speaking community argue that this relates to the easy availability of money for those training on the national team. The rewards are adequate enough to encourage mediocrity, and travelling to the odd competition with friends is enjoyable at a certain level of engagement. Why tolerate increasingly hard training for a tenuous opportunity to win big?
This may explain the situation to some extent, but it goes beyond that to a general cooling down of the social climate in respect of the importance of sport. While Russia's sports dinosaurs are hardwired with the narrative of gold at all costs, their passionate words, rooted in a proud past, cannot be matched by a current social and sporting climate that is more about comfort than victory. Add to that the recent feeling of international isolation and mistrust brought about by the WADA mishandling of Russia's doping record, and there is enough to discourage real pride in a country's record in sport. Russia is not a rich country and the opportunity to earn a good living is enough in itself.
2 The flaking infrastructure
While conditions at the national centre, Round Lake, are good, the regions still struggle to maintain sufficient funding and focus to keep their facilities and coaching up to date. In the past twelve months major gymnastics centres in St Petersburg and Leninsk-Kuznetsk have been under threat of closure, or are temporarily closed while refurbishment takes place. This is not all bad. Some areas have experienced a renaissance, eg Rostov on Don which is the home of Nikita Nagorny, Maria Kharenkova, and several other national team members. It is, however, clear that the emphasis on the 'centre' does not provide continuity in the feeding of new talent onto the national team. While the provenance of gymnasts on the men's team is diverse, the women's team is now dominated by around half of its gymnasts who come from Moscow, St Petersburg and its surrounds.
The average age of the national team coaching staff is now younger than five years ago. There are regular changes in the personnel, for example, the recent appointment of Konstantin Pluzhnikov as bars coach. Valery Alfosov, who has been head coach of the MAG team for many years, has now established himself as a passionate leader: he is dry, supportive and visionary. The WAG coaching team is supportive, but seems to have little in the way of vision, leadership or passion.
3 The gymnastics
Soviet gymnastics was all about style, imagination and innovation. Those principles have re-established themselves in the leading MAG Russian gymnasts over the past few years, to the point that there is the potential for real medal success at the next Olympics, if we are lucky. Nagorny is the fiery, do-it-at-all-costs leader; Dalolyan has real style and deftness; Lankin is the emerging genius. I love to watch them compete, and the respect they pay each other and their rivals.
WAG in general is at a low point currently. It is great to watch competitions and to see the way the girls interact with each other; to see how the gymnasts strive to outdo themselves and each other over time. But there is little of excitement in the developing form of gymnastics. The gymnasts are not disappointing, but the Code allows them little encouragement and freedom to develop the sport creatively. The same tumbles and turns are in evidence on the floor and beam, vaulting has gone backwards for the majority of all arounders, and bars routines seem interchangeable. There are always exceptions, of course, but overall the sport has lost its way. The sport needs leadership to overcome the current impasse and re-establish variety, virtuosity and balance. At present artistry and power have become divided. Power outranks artistry. The best gymnastics is a combination of both.
Artistry and power are not mutually exclusive and a pattern for the future needs to be established. There is a gap at the top of WAG for someone to take a lead. Why not Russia?
In the desperate grab for medals in an increasingly competitive sport, Russia has forgotten itself. Its sporting and cultural identity has always centred on the imposition of a graceful style and elegance within the form of whatever practice it is undertaking. During World War 2, Shostakovich transmitted an emotional performance of a symphony, composed and played in St Petersburg during the blocade. Surrounded by blood, death, famine and unimaginable suffering the Russian cultural capital produced some of the most beautiful and moving music the world could imagine. Why? 'We wanted to prove that despite all the suffering we were not just surviving, but that we had maintained our culture, that we were more than surviving', said one witness. In the same way, Russian sport, Soviet sport before it, has often overcome the boundaries of sporting competition to become an artistic form of sport. The Soviet ice hockey team of the 1980s won many medals but they didn't just impress with wins; their play was mesmerising, creating intricate patterns of play that could be enjoyed in the same way as dance. And the Soviet and Russian gymnasts also created art from the earlier discipline and military traditions of world gymnastics.
Russia still has the delicacy of touch that can make for beautiful, watchable gymnastics: think of Dalolyan as one who combines this with the necessary technical aplomb and difficulty to be a world beater. On the women's side, Elena Eremina and Angelina Simakova both embrace the elegance of the Russian tradition. They are typically Russian, and in many ways the best that Russia can produce, the gymnasts who reflect Russia's gymnastics heritage and identity. But they cannot perform the difficulty needed to consistently win medals at world level. Russia's best is not good enough at the moment. In the context of a sport that has lost its way, Russia has bolted and followed the crowd, abandoned its tradition of excellence in the pursuit of power and difficulty. Has lost sight of its true strength, technical gymnastics performed with elegance, gymnastics that transcends itself.
Boris Pilkin found a way to create gymnastics for his slight, skinny athlete, Svetlana Khorkina, that together with her technical brilliance and sheer will power made her into a legend. What Russia now needs is another coach, another Boris Pilkin for example, who can construct routines for gymnasts like Eremina and Simakova, Russia's finest, that will eventually become a model of leading gymnastics for the world to follow. It will be a precarious path. It will take at least a decade. Who can do this? When?