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| Svetlana Boguinskaia during team qualifications at the 1988 Olympics |
I'm lucky enough to own a copy of a limited special edition entitled 'Svetlana Boguinskaia - L'Etoile de la Gymnastique - Le Charme Slave'. It is full of pictures of the most photogenic gymnast ever, the best competitor, the best performer. And it includes a brief interview with Svetlana, in French, where she details the everyday moments of her life as a gymnast at Lake Krugloye.
I'm translating it for you below, as a contemporary account of her training. You will also find a rather intriguing video, from 2005, of Boguinskaia's adult account of her life as a gymnast.
6.45 am. Someone has just knocked on our door. Alexander Alexandrov comes into our room; I am already sitting on my bed, having woken up about a quarter of an hour ago. My eyes still full of sleep, I watch him wake my room mate. 'Come on girls, let's go, let's go' he keeps repeating. It's early, but it is like that, here at Round Lake - our time is managed as if we were playing music from a script.
At 7.10 am the gymnasts assemble on the ground floor, ready for a run through the forest, right around the training centre.
It often reminds me of the forest at home, in Belarus. At 7.25 our first training begins, and we return to our residence at 8.30, when we have breakfast. There is plenty of everything you could want. With my eggs, I will often have caviar, which is served to us one day black, the next red, all through the year. I usually have tea to drink.
At about 8.45 we have time for a nap until 10.00, and then at 10.15 it's time for training again - we often begin with floor work and stretches. This session finishes at about 13.15.
Then it's lunchtime: green salad, then a vegetable soup, fish or meat with polenta or with rice cooked in milk. Juices are available on the table - orange, apple or grape. There is never alcohol! We often have fruit for dessert.
Svetlana Boguinskaia with her 1988 Olympic medals
Then we leave the table and begin our 'recovery'. This takes place in the second building at the centre, in a large room where there are about 15 small cabins, each with different types of equipment. I usually have about 30 minutes of recovery, then I see the doctor.
At 14.30 we have free time which we use for a nap, or for reading. At 16.30 we train again until 19.30, when it is time for dinner. Every evening there is meat and fish, and we eat a lot of fruit. Three times a week, we have classes until 22.00. On other evenings, we go to the games room where we will play billiards, or maybe to our very own discotheque, at Round Lake!
From time to time, authors or artists come to show us their work, or for example cosmonauts have come to talk to us about their travels in space. When we have evenings like that, it's like a party, the Soviet swimmers often join us for these events.
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| Boguinskaia, age 10, in Sport in the USSR, 1983 |
Elsewhere, talking about her childhood, she says:
I realised I had technical abilities, and I think that right from the beginning, I always wanted to be first. When I was ten years old, I always wanted to be the best and when I was doing an exercise would always do it the best I possibly could. I always used to give the best of myself ... I knew that I would be someone.
Tomorrow, in Oklahoma City, a new batch of gymnasts will be inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, including two Russian legends - Liubov Burda-Andrianova and Yuri Korolev. To mark this occasion, IGHOF is making videos available of the acceptance speeches of several of the inductees, including Svetlana. She tells her own stories here, in her own voice - it is very charming and funny and I'm posting it here as an alternative narrative about her life as a young gymnast.