Sovetsky Sport. July 25, 1986. While you are performing on the platform, you truly don't appreciate the events of your sporting life. You just live by them. You breathe - that's all. It's only years after leaving the arena that the need arises to rethink the facts and ultimately re-live them. There is no escape from these thoughts...
I want to talk about one incident, or rather, about my performances, at the 1975 World Cup in London.
I'm competing in the World Cup, and then those bars appear in front of me. Not a beam, not a horse, but the bars. So I approach them with a rare, special excitement and at the same time with the utmost determination - after all, at that time the uneven bars were a particularly skittish event for me (I'll explain why later). I take a deep breath before starting my routine, and then a strange thought arises in me. "It's either me or them! I will never allow myself to be thrown off this time! If one of us falls now, it won't be me." A strange thought, of course, if you don't know the background.
That year, after the world championships in Varna, where I managed to become the world champion for the second time in a row, I was completely happy and wasn't bothered by a premonition of trouble. But failures and trials were already awaiting me. And they lay in wait - at the very end of 1974, when I was going to the traditional international tournament for the prize of the Japanese newspaper Chunichi Shimbun.
At my last home workout, while performing floor exercises, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my lower back. I didn't think much of it and didn't say anything to my coach Rastorotsky. I thought I just landed poorly and that the pain was temporary and would pass.
But when we flew to Tokyo a day later and there during training I tried to do some element, pain stabbed into my back. Through force, I still tried to train, but I simply could not complete some routines. Then I had to tell everything to Vladislav Stepanovich. We decided not to tell the competition organizers anything about my injury (we were still hoping it would go away). We also decided to make my program as easy as possible so that I would do only what I could to that didn't cause pain. But the next attempt to train showed that the pain didn't leave me in all exercises. They took a picture of my back and it turned out that there was a crack in the vertebra. The doctor's verdict was categorical: competing was out of the question. And for three months in general - no sudden movements or jumps.
Three months without gymnastics - an eternity!
For a month and a half I didn't come to the gym at all. Then I slowly began to warm up, using soft, smooth movements (after all, the doctor forbade sudden ones). After some time, they took a new picture of my spine, which showed the crack in the vertebra had healed. The doctor finally allowed me to start full training.
He allowed it, but how to do this? The fact is that during this time I gained - even now it's scary to say - nine kilograms!
I came to the gym and found that I was worse than a beginner. Firstly, fear appeared from somewhere (I had never had it before), an unaccountable fear that if I made a sudden movement the pain would return. You can't do anything in the gym with that kind of fear. So we have to get rid of it. But how? I don't know that yet. Secondly, my nine kilogram surplus was dragging me off all the apparatuses. Most often, from the uneven bars. After all, it is the uneven bars that small, light gymnasts love - it's the kind of apparatus where you can carry your own weight in your arms. That's when my difficult battle with the uneven bars began. Now I couldn't do the simplest elements. For example, a kip up on the lower pole to catch the high one. I couldn't do it, as my damned weight invariably pulled me down.
So, first of all, it was necessary to get rid of the fear, which I endlessly repeated to myself: "I'm not scared, not at all, no, no..." And, of course, it was necessary to lose the accumulated nine kilos, and no later than by the European Championships, which was only two months away.
Much to my father's chagrin, my mother now kept our refrigerator completely empty so that I wouldn't be tempted by any "extra" food.
I dreamed about food. I was invited to visit, I come, and there's a table full of all kinds of treats... Or I'm somewhere on a walk in the forest, a clear stream flows quickly. I scoop up handfuls of silvery cold water hastily - it's so delicious! - I swallow and swallow it.
Diet wasn't all it took to get back into shape. I needed to train, and I trained until exhaustion. I put on two woolen suits, a third type of "bologna" on top and ran 10-15 laps around the stadium, squatting and jumping, in order to lose at least some weight before the main training session. As a result, I lost the excess weight in two months. And out of fear, it seems too, I simply didn't allow myself to think about it. But I didn't feel any stability or lightness, I would have another month... Otherwise I was throwing everything away and shuffling it around, but I didn't have time to train at the "light" weight. The European Championships in Skien had arrived.
I was supposed to meet Nadia Comaneci for the first time. Much was said and written about her as a rising star. We were later convinced that she was.
Of course, I was most worried before the uneven bars. And here are the bars. I performed a standing swing on the top pole, then I had an arc with a 540-degree pirouette [Burda twirl]... And then, when I went into the arch, my left foot slipped off the pole - after all, they threw me off! - something broke inside me, but I said to myself: "Just don't stop!" I simplified the element on the fly and brought my routine to an end. But the judges still noticed the mistake, which resulted in a score of 9.3. It was very disappointing. I realized now that I would hardly be able to claim first place. And how I wanted to perform without errors at this first meeting with Nadia Comaneci. She was really very good, very strong, and won the championship. I ended up fourth.
In my opinion, it was then that people started to talk about my departure. "It's time to retire" and "the old lady has been sitting on the platform for too long." This was the first time I received such "complaints." I was terribly tormented by my breakdown, cried quietly and thought: maybe I shouldn't have competed? For example, Olga Korbut refused this competition for some reason, maybe she wasn't in the best shape either... What now? I performed poorly - should I leave? No, it's not for me. Moreover, my departure was planned for 1976, after the Olympic Games in Montreal, and it was still 1975.
Before the Games I had the opportunity to test myself. In October 1975, the World Cup tournament was held in London for the first time in the history of gymnastics. This was my chance.
At the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR that preceded the Cup, I failed again and again on the uneven bars. So now I couldn't think about them any other way than "either me or them."
I will always say frankly that I was persistent in training, but before the World Cup, in my opinion, I surpassed everything I had done before. I didn't feel sorry for myself at all. I trained not out of fear but out of conscience. Lucikly for me, after the Spartakiad I was finally released from illness and injury, and just before leaving for London I suddenly felt confident and decided that I was ready...
And here I go again to the uneven bars. Before starting my routine, I take a deep, long breath, and then that strange thought appears in me: "I will never allow myself to be thrown off this time. If one of us falls, it won't be me." But what happened next was even stranger. I had already done more than half of the routine when I hear an unfamiliar quiet creak and feel that something is not right with the bars. They "give," they don't spring as usual, but they literally ride and move behind me! Something happened to them!
The thought flashed: I need to jump off quickly. But I still had the final element left - the dismount. And when I went to do it, I felt that I was already completely uncontrollable. I should note that the dismount element means not only the actual dismount from the uneven bars, but the whole final set of movements. That is, I still had to do a handstand on the top pole with a 180-degree pirouette and a large swing to the bottom, a wrap on the bottom pole and a hecht with a 360-degree turn.
And so, when I was making the wrap on the lower pole, I felt that the bars were not pushing me out, as necessary so that I could make a hecht and turn 360 degrees. I just managed to push off somehow and at the same time bent my legs, which is unacceptable in gymnastics. Now I can be deducted one or two tenths of a point for the mistake. I think feverishly - that means I have to at least not lose any points during landing! I jumped off the uneven bars and stood rooted to the spot... And when I finally jumped off the bars and froze, I didn't hear anything, I was still all in the competition, in myself, the main thing now was to stand and not move. I don't even hear the roar, because it shook the entire arena along with the bars. Like this: "Ah!"
I stil don't understand what's going on, and I decorously leave the platform. And only after I turn around...I can't immediately understand what happened. What could have happened if the bars had collapsed a moment earlier?
Of course, everyone was alarmed. I was thinking about the score. I felt that I did the exercise the best I could and would do better. I just ruined the dismount. But since my error was due to a technical problem, I might be allowed to try a second time. Vladislav Stepanovich wanted me to repeat everything. He was sure that I had no reason to settle for a lower score and that I could perform the dismount flawlessly. I didn't doubt it either, but at the same time I gave it so much that I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to pull myself together like that again. And then the judges showed a score of 9.8. Despite the "crash" they were impressed that I still completed the routine. This was a high enough score to continue fighting for first place. And that means there was no need to repeat anything.
Oddly enough, I didn't attach any importance to what had happened and what could have happened to me. My thoughts were only occupied with preparation for the next apparatus - the beam - and the score. So, knowing that I wouldn't have to make another attempt on the bars, I packed my things and moved to the beam. Only when the competition ended, when I became the all-around winner of the World Cup and then saw my performance on TV (the moment when the bars collapsed was shown many times) - only then did I finally think about what could have happened. After all, the bars could have fallen when I was in a handstand on the top pole, they could have fallen on me...
The next day the individual apparatus finals of the Cup were held, and I managed to win all four gold medals - luckily without a crash. No, I will never agree that London is a city of fogs. It seemed that everything in it was shining, sparkling, the people were friendly: they liked that even though the bars had fallen apart, I still stood, and stood "as if it was none of my business."
So many years have flown by. At the Goodwill Games competition, I remembered those collapsed bars - when Oksana Omelyanchik received 10 points for floor exercise, and Elena Shushunova for vault. I remembered because before that Oksana fell from the uneven bars and Lena fell from the beam.
An apparatus collapse is, of course, a rare accident. People fall much more often. It is only important to be able to get up quickly, forget about what happened, and fight to the end.
L. TURISCHEVA