Sovetsky Sport. April 6, 1975. The Luzhniki Sports Palace. 2pm. The parade of participants. Fanfare. Speeches. Flowers. Presentation of souvenirs. Anthem of the USSR.
The competition begins! The show starts!
The women gymnasts were the first to take to the platform. There were many participants, so they performed in two shifts. Zdena Tunova from Czechoslovakia and Judit Molvai from Hungary left a pleasant impression. These girls showed a good class of performance. They stood out noticeably on the platform: they have a more difficult program and better technique. Of course, gymnasts from Switzerland, Japan, Holland, and Canada still do not shine with high difficulty, but it is felt that the young generation adopts spectacular and difficult elements from famous gymnasts.
Everyone was waiting for the performance of our gymnasts. They wondered: who would be first - world team champion Nelli Kim, national team members Lyubov Bogdanova or Lida Gorbik? Or maybe a 14-year-old from Leningrad, Olya Koval, will present a surprise?
Yes, the main fight was between Kim and Gorbik. These gymnasts are now very well prepared. Kim on her first event, floor exercise, showed herself in all her splendor. Expression and intensity, a double twist at the beginning of the routine, and exotic movements at the end. Her score is high - 9.6 points. How will Lida reply? The Minsker performed her floor exercise just as well. A little actress, she smiled and showed emotion on the mat, and the movements were sometimes fluid, sometimes fast, and the finale was very beautiful. The judges announce 9.6.
We also followed the gymnast from the GDR, Heike Gerisch, a rather brave and determined athlete. She especially succeeded in vault - clear and sharp - for 9.3. But our girls are still ahead. A brilliant composition on the uneven bars was performed by Tamara Kazanina from our youth team. She is a pupil of Yuri Shtukman. In his Voronezh school, the search for young talent continues: Kazanina - thin and broad-shouldered - has come to replace Lyubov Burda. Yuri Eduardovich himself believes that the elements that Kazanina performed on the uneven bars are very promising. There are pirouettes on the lower and upper poles (as men do on the high bar). Women have already mastered the Tsukahara vault, but it is still rare.
What about Olga Koval? When she stepped onto the mat, her coach Vladimir Reison looked at her with his head thrown back and apparently repeated her whole routine to himself. He looked at her the way he once looked at Natasha Kuchinskaya. And we thought: this Olya Koval is very talented.
Lida Gorbik fluttered smoothly on the uneven bars, and she performed a Burda twirl and a reckless dismount - an arching front somersault - for 9.6. After three events, Kim was in the lead with 28.7, Gorbik was 0.1 behind her, and Koval occupied third position with 28.25. A gymnast from Leninsk-Kuznetsk, Antonina Glebova, also claimed a share of third place. But in the end everything was decided on the last apparatus. Seventeen-year-old Nelli Kim from Chimkent confidently completed her beam routine and won the all-around (38.30). Gobrik was second (38.05) and Koval was third (37.5).
In the men's competition, the main struggle unfolded between the Soviet gymnast Viktor Klimenko and the all-around world champion Shigeru Kasamatsu. The victory was won by 26-year-old Klimenklo (56.45) over the Japanese gymnast (56.05).
V. GOLUBEV