Soviet Gymnasts Elena Shushunova and
Vladimir Artyomov
Won the Main "MN" Prizes for 1988
Moscow News, #14 1988
The men's and women's combined
events were also won by Soviet contestants. Svetlana Boginskaya and
Yuri Korolyov were second, and Olga Strazheva and Valery Lyukin third.
109 gymnasts, 57 men and 52
women, from 31 countries: Algeria, Australia, Britain, Bulgaria,
Canada, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, DPRK, Finland, France,
GDR, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, Romania, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, USA, West
Germany, plus the USSR participated in the tournament. There were 12
prizes up for grabs -- two for the combined events and ten for separate
events.
Winners in separate events
were Soviet women Natalya Frolova in the vault, Elena Shushunova in the
uneven bars and the beam, and Olga Strazheva in the floor exercises.
Soviet man Yuri Korolyov won the floor exercises, the rings, the vault and
the parallel bars and his teammate Vladimir Artyomov won on the pommel horse
and the horizontal bar. The other prizes were won by gymnasts from
DPRK, China, Hungary, Cuba, GDR, France and Romania.
Prizes awarded by the
all-union book-trading association Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga for the best
foreign contestants in the combined events went to Dagmar Kersten (GDR)
(fifth place) and Li Jing (China) (fifth place).
Elena Shushunova and Vladimir
Artyomov who won the combined events received special prizes from the
Japanese newspaper Chunichi Shimbun.
The All-Union Society of
Bibliophiles awarded their prizes to Dagmar Kersten and Csaba Fajkusz
(Hungary) as foreign contestants who took part in the greatest numbers of
finals.
The Kharkov FED engineering
association presented their cameras as consolation prizes to the female
gymnast from Mongolia Nyampkhagva and Algerian gymnast Mofik Hatib who
brought up the rear in the combined events.
Australian Kellie Larter was
voted the most charming and elegant gymnast at the tournament and received
the prize of the World Gymnastics magazine.
The Organizing Committee of
the 1987 World Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam presented their prize
to Elena Shushunova for her outstanding floor exercises upon the completion
of the MN tournament.
The tournament was covered by
150 Soviet and foreign journalists. Central Television relayed its
coverage abroad. Several foreign networks taped the highlights.
Some 15,000 fans watched the
events in the Olimpiisky Sports Complex. Between events, the crowd was
entertained by the finest Soviet acrobats, the national calisthenics team,
and members of an athletic dance group called Leader.
During the tournament team coaches attended a workshop on advanced routines.
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