Sovetsky Sport. October 24, 1974. The Japanese Shigeru Kasamatsu, Eizo Kenmostu, Mitsuo Tsukahara and Wolfgang Thune (GDR) - these are the names of the leaders after the compulsory program. Following them in fifth place is N. Andrianov and E. Mikaelyan. Our team is in second, after the Japanese team.
...The duel was again in absentia, since we performed in the penultimate shift and the Japanese in the final shift of the day. By fate, we had pommel horse as our first event, and this is generally not very successful for us, since the starting excitement interferes with the measured and concentrated work needed on this strict apparatus (please accept this not as an excuse, but only as a statement of fact).
Pommel horse - the only apparatus on which Viktor Klimenko, the Olympic champion on this event, was the last. Andrianov finished everywhere else. Klimenko tuned in for a long time, but immediately slipped off the horse and earned 8.1. Before that, Shamugiya broke and he received 8.7, which counted in the team's score. That's how we started...
We can now way: we no longer have two leaders, but one. Turning to the wall, Klimenko put on his track suit and thought...about what? Whether long months of training turned to dust in a matter of seconds, or that nevertheless it was necessary to gather courage and give strength to the team, or maybe he just went over his rings routine in his mind - Klimenko was as pale as the wall.
Andrianov, having received 9.45, had to fight alone with three (or how many of them?) Japanese claiming the all-around championship. But Voronin somehow managed a similar situation exactly eight years ago.
After our failures on the horse, our guys gathered themselves and tuned in on the rings. Safronov gritted his teeth hard, Shamugiya turned purple from his efforts, Marchenko worked stubbornly... In a word, they went from 9.3 (the lowest score) to 9.65 for Andrianov. On vault, they flew farther and landed more and more accurately: 9.3, 9.4, 9.45... Kolya soared like a bird, and again he got 9.65.
You ask, was there any hope this time to bypass the Japanese? It never disappears with us, it must happen, they are not bewitched. Especially since things went even better on parallel bars: 9.3 each for Safronov and Marchenko, 9.4 for Mikaelyan, 9.45 for Shamugiya and Klimenko. Andrianov whose pointed toes were tied with an invisible white thread, performed exacctly and dismounted - 9.7. This is a true assessment of our team, and concentrated silence reigns in our camp.
However, you know, although it's easy to be strong in hindsight, honestly, even then it dawned on me that the strings of nerves here, in that corner of the arena, were stretched to their limit and the anxiety was building and building...
The high bar is a Japanese event, so to speak. However, here too, we seem to be rolling, and Klimenko's score grows to 9.65. Andrianov approaches the dismount, here's the trick, but suddenly... Suddenly, he took off with some kind of hook and awkwardly bent his legs in the air.
Much later, smoothing his bangs with sweat, he explained that he thought he had twisted his shoulder, but in fact he didn't... For a long time the judges discussed whether it could be considered at all, was it a completed element, how much to deduct for a dismount with the legs apart. Our judge, Otari Korkia, who came here as a tourist, told me that Andrianov could have lost up to one and a half points if the clarification had an unfavorable outcome.
The element counted. 9.25. He can still fight.
It would have been possible if our Olympic champion on floor exercise had not made such a gross mistake. 8.85. Before this, Klimenko made a mistake in the same place - 8.8.
Late in the evening, I caught up with Tolkachev, Andrianov's coach. He was black-faced, and it even seemed inconvenient to ask him anything. But I still asked: "Nikolai Grigorievich, what happened, was Kolya well prepared?" Tolkachev answered without delay: "It's his own fault. They told him - we need to work on the 'speech' and on the dismount. Work, work..."
Here's the explanation. When everything is so tense, weak points appear. In other words: it's going to break where it's thin.
The Japanese came out, and alternately led either by the tiny Kato, or the stocky Kenmotsu, or the tall and elegant Kasamatsu, moved forward. From 0.1 to 0.9, they beat our team in every event. It's good when not one, but three, can immediately claim absolute superiority. So it was in our team in its ancient golden years, and so it is now with the Japanese. When Kato, having released the high bar too early, throwing his legs too high, almost rolled over in the air and earned 8.55, when Kenmotsu jumped off the carpet in floor exercise (9.05), it did not look like a tradition.
They, the Japanese, perhaps have already divided the medals on the individual events for the future. On the high bar, in any case, Tsukahara went up last. This master of tricks, a smiling tiger who, going up to the apparatus, with lazy panache raises not a hand but a fist, carelessly earned 9.7.
That's all the details, except for the fact that Thune, having performed on the apparatus in the most accurate way, with a series of scores from 9.35 to 9.7, also entered a position that allows him to fight for a medal.
Can Andrianov still fight for this place? Or Mikaelyan, perhaps? Yes, not all is lost. Not all, except perhaps the main thing - gold.
S. TOKAREV