DTB Cup results and video links

Russian WAG at Stuttgart this weekend : national coach Evgeny Grebenkin, Aliya Mustafina, Yulia Inshina, Anna Rodionova, Kristina Goryunova.  Can anyone identify the coach to the right?  Picture courtesy of Schwaebischer Turnerbund on Facebook.

The Russian WAG team had a good time at this weekend's DTB Cup in Stuttgart, finishing in first place.  It is good to see the girls competing well in a friendly, despite some setbacks.  Anna Rodionova suffered an injury on bars in the final and had to retire from the competition, leaving Aliya Mustafina to pick up responsibility on vault (full twisting Yurchenko) and Yulia Inshina to perform on floor.  Kristina Goryunova, freshly restored to the national team after completing an enforced break due to a doping infringement, did some good work on beam.

In the WAG all around, the USA's Elizabeth Price took the gold.  She reminds me of Alexandra Raisman, all power and energy, but look around for photographs of her in flight, all booty feet and bent legs.  It's a terrible indictment of international standards and the Code of Points that, as Rick says on Gymnastics Coaching, Elizabeth is probably the strongest international competing currently, what with the leading Olympians taking breaks from full training. He thinks she could have taken gold medals in London ...

Russia's representative, the hard working Goryunova, finished in seventh with a disappointing score on beam; but she would not have finished higher than fifth at best.  (Rumour has it that Goryunova substituted for Anna Dementieva in the all around, who found she could not travel at the last minute because of visa complications, though I do not understand why the unfortunate Dementieva should be the only one to be unable to secure a visa ...).

In the MAG team competition the Russian men finished second behind Japan, but ahead of Great Britain, counting some fantastic scores from star Denis Ablyazin, but still showing a shocking weakness on pommel horse.  

David Belyavski took the bronze in the men's competition all around behind Germany's Marcel Nguyen and Britain's Daniel Purvis.  Almost incidentally, but very sadly, Phillipe Boy announced his retirement from international gymnastics this weekend.  I will miss him.

You can access the original of this document here.

TamTam1982 has some videos from the competition.

Aliya Mustafina: straight Yurchenko



Aliya Mustafina : beam



Aliya Mustafina : bars



Is Mustafina nursing her leg during that dismount on beam and on vault? 

GymPower has a wider range of video available:

Anna Rodionova floor (qualifications)



Kristina Goryunova balance beam (quals)

Read More

Lupita translates : Nelli Kim interview (November 2012)

Lupita translates a recent Sports Panorama interview:

Nelli Kim: triple back on floor Nelli Kim at the USSR Display, Wembley, London, 1979.  Courtesy of Finyo. She considers herself Belarussian, although she lived in Kazakhstan until 1977 and now resides in Belarus, the US and Switzerland.  To be more precise, Nelli Kim has no home in the country of watches, banks and cheese, where she spends many months every year.  Yet, her soul is in Belarus, whose colours she defended during the last years of her fabulous gymnastics career.  Five time Olympic champion and world champion, she was recently in Minsk to brief Belarussian specialists on the new aspects of the next Code of Points. � The Code of Points will be enacted in 2013. The judges will receive new categories, she explained. I decided to come first to Minsk. To whom do I have to explain the nuances of the new Code other than Belarussian specialists?  I�ll meet with coaches and judges; we�ll talk about new trends in artistic gymnastics during the new quad. It�s a pleasure to meet again people with whom I have spent so many years in sport. Every one of my visits is not only work, but satisfaction from meeting people significant to me.  In October you were re-elected for the third time as President of the FIG Technical Committee � � Yes, for the next four years I will be the President of the Women�s Technical Committee. I�ll be responsible for the Olympic competitions, the World Championships, the Code of Points , the judging, the assessment of the judges� scores at tournaments, sanctioning judges. � Could you be more precise on this last topic? � My function is to supervise the scores of a gymnast�s routine. At the end of any championship, we gather and, after a computer assessment, we score the judging of every judge. If someone has not worked well, we sanction her with a red card and we suspend her from the next championships. � As far as I know, the suspension of a judge is not an easy proceeding. The Disciplinary Commission interferes. � It is created within the framework of the FIG and comprises three jurists and three gymnastics specialists. We tell them our conclusions and the members of the commission decide upon a judge.  We are amateurs. It�s not about business; it�s sport in an amateur sense. � Do suspensions happen often? � After the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo, two judges were suspended. One of them was a Romanian who won an Olympic medal. The Committee decided to suspend them for the London Olympics. Moreover, they will not be allowed to participate in the intercontinental course next year. They will not obtain the D elite category responsible for the most important tournaments. � What is this intercontinental course about? � The course will present the new guidelines in judging, that we�ll start applying in the new quad, including the 2016 Olympics. All the concerned persons, indlueint the Belarussian judges as well, must take the course, sit for exams and obtain a judging category. There is now a fight to take part in this process, to influence the trends in gymnastics. � Could you share with us the innovations in judging [the new Code of Points]? � We shifted some elements from one group to another, depending on their popularity in the competitions. If an element is often performed, it�s not difficult and it should score less. And, on the contrary, if it is less performed, it means it�s difficult and deserves more points. We pay attention to connections, and still to artistry. We plan to introduce big deductions in floor and beam. We invited representatives from Cirque du Soleil, who trained our specialists how to understand and assess artistry. ?his happens for the first time. Never have there been so many deductions in this direction. The understanding of art, of music by the judges is more necessary than ever. But there is subjectivism and there will be. Everyone interprets beauty in their own way. But we�ll try to assess something subjective with objective criteria. � How is that? � You�ll agree with me that a part of artistry is the body�s position, a music well-suited to the routine, fluid transitions from one part of the routine to the next. � Don�t you think that sometimes gymnastics competitions become a noisy mess. The audience, not pleased with the scores, create a real scandal. Under their influence, the judges meet, change the scores, and the winners change. � At the last Olympics, this happened in the men�s competition, when a Ukrainian gymnast lost bronze in a pommel horse routine. Men�s judges have more serious problems than we have because there�s less control over the judges. The men�s Technical Committee was chaired by Adrian Stoica, from Romania, but he decided to stand as a candidate for President of the FIG and lost. Bruno Grandi was re-elected for the fifth time. Later, Stoica was candidate for the Men�s Technical Committee, but he lost again. The president of the men�s committee is Steve Butcher, the first black president in the history of the FIG. � To come back to the scores in gymnastics, skating officials have found a way out by including a system of points for the execution of an element, for the level of complexity. � We have the same system as skating, yet I think that their approach is not good. They drop scores that help assess the situation. We rule out the lowest and the highest scores and we take into account the average scores. They can rule out these scores and keep the highest and the lowest. What we have in common with ice-skating is that the difficulty elements are classified according to a group from �?� t? �G�, ?nd now we have also included �H�. In the score this is reflected by 0.1 to 0.7, and now 0.8. If gymnasts do a triple back on floor, and, of course, land on their feet, they can get the highest bonus. So far the women don�t go for this extreme, while the men have been doing this for a long time. When they competed, Valeri Liukin and Sergei Kharkov performed those elements excellently! � Apart from the seminar, you had time to meet Vladimir Karpovich, President of the Belarussian Gymnastics Federation. � The unforgettable Vladimir Ilich [Lenin] once said that personnel solve everything. This statement is still true today. If there are no coaches, even with the best equipment, there won�t be results. The passion for gymnastics exists in the Belarussian, Russian and Ukrainian peoples. After finishing their careers, many athletes became good coaches. Right now, most of them former Soviet citizens, are coaching our rivals in the US, ?ustralia, Canada, France. Salaries abroad are from 3,000 to 5,000 US dollars! I was pleased to see that the president of the Association fiercely wants to help gymnastics, He wishes to know my opinion in order to improve the situation. Our meeting was very fruitful. � Your daughter lives in the US. Where are you more often, in Belarus or in the States? � Half and half. My ex-husband is a cyclist, Valeri Movchan, a Moscow Olympics champion. He lives in Minsk. My daughter finished her studies at a business school in Chicago and she now wants to study medicine. However, she doesn�t give up amateur sport; she practices different activities. ?ikhail DUBITSKI This interview took place before recent rumours that the WAG Code of Points will change once again before enactment in 2013, leading to ten skills counting on floor, in order to harmonize with the MAG Code of Points. I like what Nelli says about artistry in this interview - doubt the judges would be willing or capable of enacting it all fully but the ideas of involving specialists to help train judges in the appreciation of artistry, of the importance of transition from skill to skill, of acknowledging the subjectivity of judgement, seem to be steps in the right direction.   But then my heart sank when I read of the proposed changes.  Counting ten difficulties on floor, and four dance elements, seems regressive.  Do we want our floor routines to turn into a frantic battle to fit in as many poorly executed tumbles, turns and leaps as quantitatively possible, without consideration of mood, feeling or flow?   Will the music become a mere incidental, background accompaniment, robbed of any significance or relation to the drama of a performance?  If the FIG feels the need to harmonize, why not decrease the number of difficulties in men's gymnastics and emphasise there also the need for artistry and virtuosity? What do you think?  Please comment ...

Read More

1980 Olympics WAG All Around video link

1980 Olympic Champion Elena Davydova at a London display in 1978

This French TV transmission of the historic final at the Moscow Olympics is fascinating for the mix of fluff and routines it presents.  Sadly, we see only two fragments of Nadia Comaneci's routines.  I would be tempted to say that this was a Soviet feed edited for diplomatic purposes, but I remember the BBC live transmission as covering Comaneci in full.

I sat there, glued to my television set as the judges fought out the final rankings.  With Soviet Elena Davydova standing in first place, 1976 champion, the legendary Comaneci, needed a 9.95 on beam to take the gold.  Unfortunately, she took a rather hefty wobble half way through her routine, ending with a mark of 9.85 and the silver medal.  This was an astounding result for a gymnast who had been to hell and back since her former glorious victories in Montreal, but that did not stop Romanian judge Maria Simionescu from fighting and debating the mark with rival Ellen Berger for a full ten minutes.  I watched as the little flashing square in the corner of the TV screen indicated that the transmission was due to be cut, as Davydova and her friends covered their faces in anticipation, as an apparently lonely Comaneci strode the competition floor tensely, but the BBC stayed with gymnastics right until the end.  Davydova was strewn in the air by her jubilant team mates and gold went to the Soviet Union, silver to an apparently defeated Comaneci.  This video is somewhat foreshortened and captures only part of the action, but will remind us oldies of the excitement of that Olympics, and provide some points of reference for those who didn't catch the joy first time round.

The emotion and impact of Comaneci's mark of ten on bars - captured here as a fragmentary playback - is tangible even from a distance of more than thirty years.  Comaneci, denied gold at the two previous World Championships, fought back after a disappointing start in the team competition - falling on bars - to be in contention for gold all around.  The eventual winner, Davydova, has been recorded by history as a lucky first, but I do not think so.  Her routines have a rare touch of lightness, that vault sparkles through the air, the floor routine perfectly exploits the newly introduced opportunities of orchestrated music.  All four of her routines showed original elements, well performed with artistry.  Comaneci gave the gold away with that tremble on the beam, but silver was a victory for her in any event.

We are reminded of the togetherness of this Soviet Olympic team - watch how Maria Filatova shakes her fists in support of Davydova's floor performance, how Elena Naimushina takes Davydova in a stranglehold, Stella Zakharova looking on with those coal-intense eyes.  Blond, glamorous, national coach Polina Astakhova was in the mix there, moving Reuter boards and providing moral support.  Svengali Vladislav Rotstorotski could only watch from the stands, banished there by his gymnast Natalia Shaposhnikova.  If I were to draw a cartoon of Rotstorotski here he would somehow be veiled in an ever increasing, dark fug of depression.  The innovative Shaposhnikova was expected to be the gold medal winner, but was missing something here, and seems rather alienated from the main action of the day.  Interviewed after the competition, Rotstorotski expressed his regret at not overriding his gymnast's wishes and accompanying her to the floor.  I wonder if it would have made any difference against the great performance quality of the rising star, Davydova. 

Elsewhere, enjoy routines from across the competitive field.  Nelli Kim struggles through with her coach Vadim Baidin, looking to be in pain after a fluffed floor routine, with the judges holding up the whole competition for a good five minutes while the rather obvious mark of 9.45 was agreed.  Comaneci's team mate Emilia Eberle looks as skeletal and desolate as she did less than a year before in Forth Worth, but still managed a 9.95 on floor.  We see Germany's Maxi Gnauck, Steffi Kraker and Katharina Rensch, Britain's Suzanne Dando and Susan Cheeseborough, Australia's Sulicich, Bulgaria's Galina Marinova.  Don't forget that this was the Games that the Americans boycotted, four years before the Los Angeles Games that the Soviets boycotted.  All was not well in world sport at the time.  But the quality of the gymnastics in Moscow did not suffer.

Enjoy the video.

Read More

Flashback to 1972 ... Olga Korbut wins the BBC's International Sportswoman of the Year Award

I remember Olga receiving this award back in 1972 ... I was 13 years old. It was before the time of video recorders, personal computers and Youtube, and therefore a rare opportunity to savour those amazing moments from Munich again.

I was so thrilled to see Olga Korbut on my little black and white TV screen, collecting her BBC award as International Sportswoman of the Year. Gymnastics was new to me, Olga had opened my eyes to the sport, they have never closed.

There was something so special about Olga. Those moments from 1972 never lose their freshness.

With many thanks, once again, to Novosti, for reminding me of this great moment.

Read More

Olga Mostepanova - four perfect tens in one competition

Olga Mostepanova in training.  Courtesy of RIA Novosti

The joy of that video of the 1976 Olympics sent me into an Olympic reverie, a recollection of perfect tens of the past. 

There is no greater unsung hero than 1983 and 1985 World Champion Olga Mostepanova, who competed at the 1984 Alternative Olympics in Olomouc, but was denied the chance of appearing at the Olympics thanks to larger, world political events that saw the Soviet Union boycott the Los Angeles Games. 

I first saw Olga compete at Wembley in 1981 at the annual Champions All competition.  She was a tiny little thing, wearing a white leotard and with big white ribbons in her hair.  I remember how coach Vladimir Aksenov paid attention to her between each apparatus, holding her hand and leading her through the competition.  But for all her baby looks, Olga was an impressive gymnast, especially on beam where her lines, soft and sharp at the same time, melded with an innate sense of rhythm to create gymnastics of great beauty.

Olga is the only gymnast ever to score ten on all four pieces of apparatus.  She achieved this at Olomouc, the alternative Olympic Games set up for the Eastern bloc countries in 1984.  In Los Angeles, Mary Lou Retton became the first all-American gymnastics star, all air-punching, powerful and grinning white teeth.  In Olomouc Mostepanova became a legend of the purest artistic form seen in world gymnastics - ever.  Those four ten scoring routines remain the Holy Grail of gymnastics, much sought after, but rarely seen in their entirety. 

I had to remind myself that it's 28 years since Olga achieved this amazing feat, and went running again to the wonderful RIA Novosti media gallery where I picked up some matchlessly gorgeous pictures.  You can see the entire selection I have made at RRG's Facebook page.  Savour too the all too brief videos.  Olga's contribution to the sport is becoming a disappearing legacy of the aesthetic, the blurry lines of the video recording reflecting the distance of time and space between her outstanding performances and the disappointingly tangible gymnastics of today.


Olga Mostepanova's perfect beam compulsory from the 1985 World Championships





An all too short fragment of Olga's floor routine from the 1984 Alternative Olympic Games.

Read More

1976 Montreal Olympic Games - video

It's hard to believe that it is now 36 years since Nadia fought Nelli at the Montreal Olympics, since Maria unveiled that trademark cheeky charm, since Ludmilla broke her heart and Olga broke ours. The sport has come a long way since those heady days. Turn the clock back another 36 years and we pre-date the beginning of the 'new' era of gymnastics that began with the entry of the Soviet Union into Olympic competition in 1952. In that sense only, the sport was still in its infancy. Just think of all the twists and turns since.

Gymnastics was on the cusp of an acrobatically led revolution. Just look at the bars routines of Saadi, Tourischeva and Grozdova and compare them to those of Filatova, Comaneci and Korbut. Comaneci looks well ahead of the field on bars, but Nelli Kim soars ahead on floor and vault. This video reminds us that Comaneci's victory in Montreal was not as emphatic as the legend may lead us to believe: her floor is unsophisticated and relatively simple (see her compatriot Ungureanu for superior dance and expression though), vault a good effort but lacking the complexity of Kim's outrageous innovation for that time. Kim combines artistry and acrobatics to express the full dimensions of the sport of artistic gymnastics; Comaneci impresses with her daringly confident bars and beam. It is all about who made the most impact with the first ever 'ten' recorded in Olympic gymnastics' history.

It's a great video that has recently become available on Youtube, good quality and with full (Russian language) commentary. Not complete, but the best record many of us have available, with floor music intact - so now we can follow a pivotal part of the gymnastics narrative at almost first hand.

Read More

Russia today and tomorrow: Dementyeva, Shelgunova and Kharenkova take gold in Europe

Evgeniya Shelgunova, courtesy of the UEG

Russia's women gymnasts took gold at two different competitions this weekend, showing an interesting level of development across the generations.  Veteran Anna Dementyeva competed with significantly improved form at the Joaquim Blume Memorial, hitting a 14.75 on beam, while at the annual Massilia Cup in Marseille, France, emerging senior (eligible 2013) Evgeniya Shelgunova led her team to first place, taking the all around title for herself.  Youngster Maria Kharenkova added an exclamation mark to the Russians' performances with an emphatic gold in the floor exercise.

The Russian team's performance was enhanced by tiny Viktoria Kuzmina's silver medal on uneven bars.  The team cumulatively took first place on every piece of apparatus but vault, where their fifth place underlines an urgent need to make improvements.  Even the revaluation of the Amanar vault will not overcome such a deficit whilst competing against a relatively weak field.

Golden Maria Kharenkova, having grown quite a lot since her stunning appearances at this spring's European Championships, was quite magnificent on floor with longer limbs emphasising the height and power of her leaps.  She also showed off some new difficulty, with a one and a half twisting somersault replacing the whip in her second tumble run (ending with double tuck), and adding a stag leap to her final tumble of double pike.  The Russians need a good floor worker or two so it is encouraging to see Maria continue to develop in the midst of a growth spurt. 

It would normally be in the Russians' plans to improve Maria's toe point but considering changes to next year's Code (which defines artistry as good tumbling but makes no mention of line, toe point, harmony or rhythm) they may decide it's not worth the time.

Hey ho.  14 year old Maria's work is still more interesting and aesthetic than the Olympic floor champion's by far, demonstrating that artistry can exist alongside great tumbling without compromising, or robbing the sport of its cultural dimension.  Long live Russian choreographers. 

Read More

Russia's plans for 2013 : target Worlds, Europeans, Universiade; change the rules!

2010 World team champion Tatiana Nabieva should compete in Kazan this summer

National coach Valentina Rodionenko has given two interviews recently about Russia's plans for the future.

Here, she explains how next March's Russian Championships will be used as selection for the four gymnasts who will compete at the individual European Championships in April. It's a heavy year's competition with Europeans in the Spring, the Universiade in July, and the World Championships in the autumn.  Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Tatiana Nabieva and Krystyna Goryunova have already been announced as being in contention for the Universiade, which Rodionenko says Russia are treating as a highly important competition and which will take place on home ground in Kazan.

Next year, two juniors will progress to senior level - Evgenia Shelgunova [who will have full competitive eligibility for senior competition] and Maria Kharenkova [who will train alongside the seniors in 2013, but still compete at junior level until 2014].

In a radio interview she adds that the team expects to strengthen itself by adding three or four newcomers in time for the Olympics in 2016.  Many regional and national competitions will take place to try to identify upcoming talent. 

Amendments to the Code of Points have been partly favourable, in particular the downgrading of the Amanar vault and improvements to the beam marking, meaning that fine execution will receive a bonus.  However, Valentina criticises new approaches to rewarding artistry in the floor routines: there is much confusion between judges and coaches as to its meaning.  The new Code has identified 'nicely performed acrobatics with stuck landings' as artistry, but the Russians feel that it is more about quality of performance, eg pointed toes and good lines, than acrobatic connections.  They intend to write a letter to the FIG in the near future to try to persuade them to change the rules as they pertain to floor exercises. 

And I don't blame them. 

You can find the new WAG Code of Points here.

Read More

Olga Bicherova - picture and video gallery

Fishing the internet for black and white pictures of gymnasts, I came across the following images at the RIA Novosti Media Gallery.

1981 World Champion Olga Bicherova is very photogenic, and I love these candid shots.  Soviet champions were often highly praised for their diligence and sense of duty, not just in sports but in everyday life.  Collecting stamps, replying to fan mail and working hard in the classroom all personified the work ethic and high standards which exemplified the perfect Soviet citizen. 

Olga Bicherova replying to a Japanese fan's letter, shortly after winning the 1981 World Championships.  Courtesy of RIA Novosti

Olga Bicherova in practice with choreographer Galina Savarina, in 1982

Olga Bicherova and her stamp collection, 1981

Olga Bicherova, the model schoolgirl, 1981

Tiny Olga Bicherova with coach Boris Orlov in 1978

This brief Soviet television documentary emphasises the personal qualities that made her such a great example for youth.



Olga Bicherova was a gymnast of great charisma, charm and competitive strength.  She is remembered in particular for her tantalizing floor performances, aggressive vaulting and confident beam routines. 

You can find here the floor routine with which Olga won the 1981 World all around title.

And her later, 1983, floor routine, for me a favourite for its personality, expression and the way she flirts with the judges.



There is some doubt over Olga's birthdate: born October 26th, did she turn 14, or 15 (as required to compete in an FIG competition) in 1981?  Even now, some thirty-one years later, there is confusion; for example, age details on some of the Novosti pictures from 1978 and 1979 are confusing.  But with such a time distance, it is easy enough to get someone's age wrong.  Surely, at such a tender age Bicherova would not have been able to change her own credentials.  What remains certain is that Bicherova was one of the best gymnasts in the world during a time when talent and competition were deeper than ever. 

Read More