A changing of the guard

I certainly wasn't the only one who observed events in Rio yesterday.  And what a sad day, to see Romania fall out of contention for a team place in the Rio Olympics, so suddenly and so brutally after months of anticipation.  Although the team's performance was consistent with their result at the Glasgow World Championships, it was especially hard to hear how they fell at the very first hurdle, to read of the failures on bars, for so long a bugbear of the Romanian system.  After that, the team spirit was set and it was always going to be hard to lift them to more winning ways.  

Romania's fate really echoes so much that has happened to Russia in recent years: an over reliance on a handful of star performers, many of them now injured and veteran; juniors difficult to transition to senior level responsibility; distinct technical weaknesses on one or two apparatus; and, for the Romanians especially, a volatile internal political situation resulting in frequent staffing changes to the coaching team.  In Romania also (as in Ukraine) funding is a big problem.  I wonder if, like Ukraine, the great tradition of Romanian gymnastics will now fail.  Their men's team has also, more quietly, fallen out of sight.

 

Interestingly, all of the twelve nations who have qualified full WAG teams to Rio are developed economies who have highly organised sports systems whose funding is derived from a variety of sources - corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, self-generated income and government support.  The Ukraine men's team stands alone across the men's and women's team qualifiers as a nation whose funding and organisation relies almost entirely on the spirit and determination of its athletes and coaches.  Verniaiev and his team are remarkable and I wish for a medal for them in Rio.  Gymnastics is a highly resource-dependent sport, one of the most expensive both financially and in terms of personal commitment.

We can point at Romania and say 'the training needs to improve'.  That is fairly self-evident.  But this will not change while the funding and political situation of the sport within Romania itself remains so uncertain, and while the burden of coaching rests on the shoulders of a handful of long-suffering personal and team coaches.  Whether the wider Romanian economy and political environment can support the development of the necessary training infrastructure is a moot point, and one that I am not qualified to judge; but the general observation is there for all to see - gymnastics at team level is for highly organised countries with the political will and economic capability to make it work.

So we look forward, and send all of our best wishes to Romania and to those systems who are struggling under their current regimes.  

And we celebrate another remarkable athlete, Oksana Chusovitina, who yesterday qualified to her seventh Olympic Games.  Oksana has independently forged her own luck and training framework, with the help of the national coaches to the Uzbekistan team, including her 1992 Soviet Union team mate Svetlana Boguinskaia.  I will hope to see them both in the arena in Rio; what an amazing sight that will be.

With thanks to the fans of gymnastics , and the FIG, who provide the pictures here.