Komsomolskaya Pravda. December 4, 1973. "I was able to experience the joy of victories in Moscow, Prague, Rome, and Tokyo," said eight-time world champion and ten-time Olympic champion Larisa Latynina, leaving the gymnastics platform. And the famous gymnast - now the head coach of the USSR national team - is once again rejoicing in her victories. After leaving the platform, Latynina wrote the book Balance, a book filled with interesting reflections on the essence of sport and the future of women's artistic gymnastics.
How accurate were these predictions? What is gymnastics like today?
Gymnastics has become significantly more complex now; it now include elements my friends and I had never dreamed of. The constant creative explorations of our coaches and the girls themselves forced us to look at artistic gymnastics with new eyes and opened up new horizons. Gymnastics has become more vibrant and expressive. I remember the time when floor exercises were performed without musical accompaniment. Then music began to sound over the gymnastics platforms, and that was the second revelation of the expressive potential of artistic gymnastics. But only now, in my opinion, have our gymnasts managed to achieve the most important thing - the subtle and heartfelt embodiment of the musical image in every movement and gesture. Remember the performances of Turischeva and Korbut, Burda and Saadi - this is no longer just a sport, it is art. The sparkling talent of these gymnasts, and their precedessors, helped gymnastics gain a third life, making it a spectacle that no one can remain indifferent to.
But still, I believe the foundation for the Soviet team's current victores was laid back when my generation of gymmnasts was performing. It was then that the Soviet school of women's artistic gymnastics took shape, its key characteristics being technical brilliance, confidence in the execution of the most difficult elements, logical completion of each routine, expressiveness, and genuine artistry. And more importantly, the team's true athletic character was already established back then. We never divided competitions into "individual" and "team" - team victories were always the most joyful for us. We never gave up even after the most devastating setbacks - we fought for victory to the last hope, for hundredths, and sometimes thousandths, of a point. And when, in the fiercest team battle on the Munich stage, our girls fully demonstrated all these qualities, when Lyuda Turischeva and Olya Korbut put their personal rivalries aside for the sake of the overall victory, it became the most joyful gift for me. So, traditions are alive!
So, one of the main keys to success is an established, so to speak, crystallized school of gymnastics?
It depends on what you mean by "school." Of course you can take the best of what was created by your precedessors, polish it, and refine it to the limit... And gymnastics will have made great strides during this time... The Soviet school of gymnastics is always about creativity, a search for something new.
Let's take Olya Korbut and her coach Renald Knysh: didn't they manage to take the very best of waht Soviet gymnastics had accumulated and creatively develop this legacy - develop it, not polish it? The coach and his student are not resting on their laurels even now: Olga Korbut has many more complex elements in reserve, which, if not for the unfortunate injury, she would certainly have shown in London at the world [sic] championhips. Take Lyudmila Turischeva, the athlete who swept all the gold medals in gymnastics. It would seem there was no need to look for anything new - there's a magnificent, almost foolproof routine! But in London, Turischeva once again amazed the audience by performing the extremely difficult Tsukahara vault, previously considered only a men's vault, at an official competition.
>But you once wrote: "After the Tokyo Olympics, it was said in an interview that the future of gymnastics lay in its further complication, in approaching the difficulty of men's gymnastics. I will never agree to this. Someone's style cannot be absolutely replicated and made the standard." And also: "The very word 'trick' irritates me somewhat..."
And you know, it still does. Difficulty for the sake of difficulty, a trick for the sake of a trick, in my opinion, are completely contraindicated in real gymnastics. I don't know if today's fans of our sport remember the performance of the American gymnasts at the 1958 Moscow world championships. It was precisely the gymnastics of tricks, and the tricks were often literally stunning - after performing them, the gymnasts often couldn't stay on the apparatus. But surprising doesn't necessarily mean delighting or captivating. And without spirituality, intellectualism, and feminine beauty, there can be no great gymnastics.
Nowadays, people sometimes try to absolutize Olga Korbut's style, reducing it to the flawless execution of two or three truly breathtaking elements. Olga herself takes offense and even complains about such 'connoisseurs' of her art. After all, Korbut doesn't perform these tricks for the sake of tricks: each one is organically woven into the lace of her program, an integral part of it. Put aside your expectations of sensational elements for a moment, carefully examine each movement, sequence, and experience this gymnast's entire program, and you will understand how much richer, deeper, and more beautiful Olga Korbut's gymnastics talent is. It seems to me that the more a trick stands out in a gymnast's performance, the less praise her overall performance deserves. Complexity and tricks are necessary in gymnastics, but only when they serve the most important purpose - the expressiveness and completeness of the routines.
Beauty is multifaceted and diverse; it defies all canons, and therefore the most impressive performances are usually those of teams that bring together the most diverse gymnasts. During our exhibition performances in England, a veritable "cult" of Korbut developed - that's how Olya won the hearts of the British people. In the US, we received a letter from a professor at an American university, in which he explained that almost all of his students now wear "Turischeva-style" hairstyles, striving to emulate their favorite in some way. In Japan, spectators once brought a small electric organ to a competition, asked for it to replace their usual piano, and enjoyed Lyuba Burda's floor exercises set to Bach's Sonata in D Minor. As you can see, in our team's magnificent "concert," each gymnast managed to find something personal, something dear and special to them.
In your book, you wrote: "A leader in sport establishes himself." And if we were to judge the leader of our national team solely from this perspective, it would be Lyudmila Turischeva - a multiple Olympic, world, and European champion, and a veteran of the national team. But recently, both fans and journalists have been writing more and more about Olya Korbut, whose popularity sometimes overshadows Turischeva. So, who is the true leader of the national team now - Korbut or Turischeva?
Yes, Olga Korbut is truly incredibly popular in the gymnastics world right now, and deservedly so. But popularity doesn't necessarily equal leadership. Leadership isn't earned by cheering fans; it must be earned, first and foremost, by coaches and teammates. And Lyudmila Turischeva has long secured this position. She first proved it back in 1968 when, shortly after a discouraging setback in Mexico City, this fifteen-year-old managed to win the USSR Cup in a fierce battle. Even then, we marveled at Lyuda's extraordinary willpower and fortitude. Turischeva brilliantly proved her right to be considered a leader at the Munich Olympics. And most recently, a month ago, in London, when Lyuda became the first Soviet gymnsat to become European champion for the second time in a row!
True, one can often hear comments like from from fans of Olga Korbut's gymnastics talent: "If it hadn't been for that ill-fated breakdown on the parallel bars in Munich...", "if it hadn't been for the unexpected ankle injury in London..." It's here that the line separates a true leader from anyone, even a superb master. This is precisely the strength of a leader: there can be no "ifs"; they must be able to win in any situation. And to do this, you must, above all, be a true person in every respect: in your attitude toward sport, toward yourself, toward your own glory, and especially toward the glory of others. And Olga Korbut still lacks these qualities. So, there are many bright "stars" in Soviet gymnastics today, and the leader among them is Turischeva.
After every performance by our team, the editorial mail brings dozens of letters from young gymnasts with the same question: how to become a champion, what does it take to be like Turischeva or Korbut? And, obviously, your answer would be the most authoritative for them...
I'd like to respond with the words of our wonderful poet Mikhail Svetlov: "You need talent, of course. Then you need great conviction, you need love... Then you need skill. Then you need to maintain within yourself a state of constant work."
Interview by S. SHACHIN