Sovetsky Sport. November 4, 1973. I like modern gymnastics - there are so many bright, unexpected, unknown things in it. When I started as a coach, I immediately realized that I was not satisfied with repetitions and training just the masters. I wanted to surprise and amaze. Where does this desire come from? I don't know, maybe because I didn't manage to become a famous gymnast myself.
If I may say so, I was excited by the new wave in women's gymnastics - Kuchinskaya, Petrik, Voronina, Karaseva. Previously, coaches, not all of them of course, thought stereotypically: athletes differ from each other only in the manner of performance, but not in exercises. And after 1964, different currents and directions appeared, in a word - diversity appeared. And I unconditionally took the side of the 'pioneers' - Yu. Shtukman and R. Knysh. Why should we just stand still? Why not try to search, to move away from the template, to say your weighty word in gymnastics? It had to be done. The times demanded it.
You have no idea how interesting it is to constantly practice something new in gymnastics. To live with old baggage is to ruin your coaching spirit. I remember that Vladislav Stepanovich Rastorotsky said that the routines of his student Lyudmila Turischeva were created for many years and they are unlikely to change anything. No, nothing came of it - Rastorotsky could not be satisfied with little, updated her program, modernized it, developed different variants. Thus, he moved forward.
I am deeply convinced that gymnastics, like other sports, will develop without limits. It is at least ridiculous that some people from the FIG try from time to time to raise questions about limiting difficulty. You can't think in old categories, you can't slow down progress. How long have we been surprised by the experiments of Shtukman, then Knysh? It seemed that these two broke all possible notions of difficulty. But very soon everything that was initially frightening became accessible, understandable, common. This is the case in any area of life, and it is the same in sport. The laws are the same both here and there.
The coaching credo of those who, so to speak, move gymmsatics: to be at least a millimeter ahead in their search and knowledge. We must try to anticipate the future. Yes, mistakes and miscalculations are possible. I love the saying, "Risk is a good thing." I've made a lot of mistakes. But in the end, if you do what you dedicate your life to, you will still come out on the right path.
Now in our women's gymnastics there are a lot of coaches who do not think in a stereotypical way. This is great, it makes you work more energetically. You sometimes come to paradoxes. I was practicing an unusual dismount off the uneven bars with Lyuba Bogdanova, and in the process of training I thought: "maybe I should not do a dismount, but an element inserted in the exercise?" At first I was scared of the idea myself - it seemed incredible. And then we started doing it little by little. So gradually the trick was born. We haven't practiced it properly yet, but we will probably show it soon.
It seems to me that for the 1976 Olympics we, the coaches, need to work on how to make the most original routines out of the whole mass of very difficult new elements. Unexpected routines of even known elements have a great effect. We have a lot of material (thank you, inventors), and it remains only to mold, create and...create again.
Maiburov has been called Moscow's Shtukman. He, too, invents new elements that cause oohs and aahs. A man of maximalist views, Maiburov says in the same voice as R. Knysh: "Gymnastics is acrobatics on equipment." He started training boys, then switched to working with girls and, perhaps, one of his first female students began to learn elements taken from male gymnasts. He has a passion for fantasy literature, and reading books, he says, helps him come up with fantastic tricks.
Four years ago, three students of Nikolai Evdokimovich - M. Gordeeva, I. Kondrashina, and I. Tkal - entered the national junior team at the same time, and L. Shabalina took second place at the USSR Cup and went to the European championship in Landskrona as a substitute. These gymnasts did not go higher, but nothing is lost without a trade, and now Maiburov is proud of the truly talented 18-year-old Bogdanova: "She is a courageous person, I have a lot of faith in her." Lyuba is already in her second year in the main squad, and desperately fought for a trip to the Olympics, but the competition was too fierce at the time. Now Maiburov believes that in Ufa [at the USSR championships] Bogdanova will be able to enter the top three.
Maiburov is a little shy about talking about his age. He is already 47, but many envy his enthusiasm and temperament. He is young at heart, with ideas that fill him, and he is firmly convinced that these ideas are feasible.