Sovetsky Sport. September 1, 1972. But the fight is not over yet.
Imagine the final stretch of a great race, where equally matched competitors are battling it out. The competition is fierce. The leaders change almost every second. And finally, in the finishing meters, one of them manages to make a last-ditch sprint, surprising everyone in the audience.
I don't know if the spectators at the Olympic Stadium will get to see something like this from the track and field athletes, but something similar already happened on the final day of the men's individual all-around gymnastics competition. The competition was incredibly fierce. After what had happened in the previous days, it was clear that only the Japanese were competing for the medals. But our athletes were not mere passive observers either.
Let me remind you that S. Kato led the tournament table going into the final with 57.55 points. But after the very first routine, he was overtaken by E. Kenmotsu. Kenmotsu scored 9.45 on the parallel bars, while the Olympic champion of Mexico only managed 9.25 on the floor exercise. Then Kasamatsu moved into second place, performing his floor exercise, not with the same brilliance as the day before, but still quite well, scoring 9.5. Before the last two apparatuses, A. Nakayama, who possesses a whole collection of gold medals, but none for winning the all-around competition at top-level tournaments, moved into second place. Will fortune finally smile upon the captain of the Japanese team this time?
It should be noted, however, that at this stage of the individual competition, all athletes are divided into groups by drawing lots, and therefore gymnasts from the same country may be competing on different apparatuses simultaneously. So, Nakayama ended up with the pommel horse, a rather unpleasant apparatus. And the leader, Kenmotsu, fared even worse - he got the vault, an event where the Japanese don't usually excel. Kato, however, with undisguised pleasue, headed towards the high bar, on which he is just as remarkable a master as the rest of his teammates. Kenmotsu vaulted well, scoring 9.6, and Nakayama also performed admirably, receiving a 9.4 on the pommel horse. But Kato, this small, adolescent-looking small Kato, was beyond all praise. He completed the intricately executed routine with a breathtaking dismount and got exactly what he needed, even more than expected: 9.75. This was the winning final move.
Our guys found it difficult to even take small steps up the tournament ladder. For this, N. Andrianov needed to perform his difficult vault - a forward somersault with one and a half twists - with extreme precision, scoring 9.75. He performed excellently on the horizontal bar, scoring 9.65. This allowed him to move up to fourth place. But today, while performing a double somersault on the floor exercise, Nikolai stepped outside the mat and lost just under 0.2 points. And that's exactly what cost him the bronze medal.
For V. Klimenko, things were even more difficult. His injured leg was bothering him, and a scrape on his palm was bleeding. But he stubbornly climbed up from his eighth place and eventually made it to sixth. He was particularly successful with his routine on the parallel bars, where he and Nakayama both scored 9.65.
Overall, on this day, our guys performed the exercises more freely and didn't seem nervous. They need to maintain this attitude for the finals on the individual apparatuses. There are good chances for medals for Klimenko on the pommel horse and parallel bars, for Voronin on the rings, for Andrianov on the floor exercise - and on the vault he could even compete for the top prize.
In short, the fight is not over yet.
TECHNICAL RESULTS
Men. All-around. 1. S. Kato (JPN) - 114.65; 2. E. Kenmotsu (JPN) - 114.575; 3. A. Nakayama (JPN) - 114.325; 4. N. Andrianov (URS) - 114.2; 5. S. Kasamatsu (JPN) - 113.7; 6. V. Klimenko (URS) and K. Koste (GDR) - 113.075 ... 12. M. Voronin (URS) - 111.525 ... 16. V. Shchukin (URS) - 110.80 ... 18. A. Maleev (URS) - 110.65 ... 31. E. Mikaelyan (URS) - 101.30.
M. SUPONEV