Sovetsky Sport. June 9, 1971. Today, our story is about the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), about the problems facing its leadership, what role in the activities of the FIG is played by the representation of Taisiya Antonovna Demidenko, who competed as a member of our country's national team for fifteen years, then became a senior coach, and has now been active in the FIG for decades. We will briefly introduce readers to the history and structure of this international organization.
Founded in 1881, the FIG is one of the oldest international sports organizations. Its founding countries are Belgium, France, and Holland. Currently, the FIG unites 64 national federations. The president is Arthur Gander (SUI); the vice presidents are Takashi Kondo (JPN), Nikolai Popov (URS), and George Gulack (USA); the secretary general is Max Bangerger (SWE); and the treasurer is Millivo Radivanovich-Farben (YUG). The steering committee also includes four members: Claes Thoresson (SWE), Marco Gotta (ITA), Jean-Pierre Servato (LUX), and Berthe Villancher (FRA). The FIG has a women's technical committee (headed by Villancher), a men's technical committee (Gander), and a rhythmic gymnastics commission (Gotti).
It's a long time until the Olympic Games. According to gymnastics canons, this period is insignificant. Especially now that the decision has been made to develop a compulsory program for four years. I note that such a decision was dictated, on the one hand, by joyful, but on the other hand, by still upsetting circumstances. Artistic gymnastics has become so "young" that the members of the national teams in many countries have not been able to keep up with the previously-existing two-year term to sufficiently master the program proposed by the FIG. This is also the reason for the introduction of an age limit - at least 14 years old for the year of participation in the European and world championships and the Olympic Games.
These issues were resolved at the 49th FIG Congress in Ljubljana, and at the last meetings of the FIG technical committees held in Zurich and then in Paris. The compulsory program itself has also undergone changes. Unfortunately, this is true only for the women. The women's technical committee unanimously recognized that women's gymnastics around the world has grown significantly in both difficulty and performance in recent years. This made it possible to give national federations the right to be creative in preparing the compulsory program (each team performs its own compositions). The character of the compulsory, following the example of figure skaters, is given to the program by the inclusion of compulsory elements. After 1972, another step forward too be made in this direction - the free arrangement of compulsory elements will be allowed.
However, the proposal as a whole did not find unanimous support among those who took part in the voting, including representatives from the GDR, Japan, and Sweden - countries where gymnastics is at a very high level.
The men's technical committee has maintained the same order: all athletes from all countries will perform the same compulsory program for four years. This, naturally, may affect the number of spectators on the days of the men's competitions in the so-called "school."
However, guests of the Olympic Games will be spared the monotony. Changes have been made to the Olympic gymnastics program. The men will perform their compulsory program on the same day as the women. Of course, the audience for the performance will increase significantly due to this. At the same time, it was possible to achieve something else - to protect the interests of gymnastics in the face of the increasingly persistent aspirations of some leaders of the International Olympic Committee, aimed at reducing the program of the Games and reducing the number of medals.
Now, thanks to the joint performances of men and women in the six days alloted in the program of the Games, gymnastics will be able to hold competitions in the compulsory and then optional programs of the team competition (half the sum of which goes to the individual competition), the all-around final competition (in the optional program) with the participaton of the 36 strongest male and female gymnasts and, finally, the finals competitions in the individual events. However, in order to be admitted to the Oympic Games, teams must now meet qualifying standards. Only six world team championship medalists are exempt from this exam. The performances of the remaining teams from March, for example, to June 1972 will be under the vigilant control of FIG representatives. The average passing score achieved by the third member of the teams at national championships and international competitions included in the FIG calendar, and in the presence of a referee and two judges appointed by the FIG, must be at least 8.5 points. True, if there are fewer teams than indicated in the current quota - 18 men's teams (15 national teams and 3 individual athletes) and 18 women's teams (16 national teams and 2 individual athletes) - the standard will be reduced to 8.4 or even 8.3 points.
This is what gymnastics will look like at the Olympic Games now. But before this could be achieved, gymnastics had to go through a difficult and indirect path in the Oympic arena. Although gymnastics was included in the program of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, its fate over the years often depended on the whim, or more precisely, on the interests of the hosts of the competition. Who doesn't know the strength of American sportsmen in athletics? And so, in the program of the team gymnastics competitions at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis (USA), the Americans, in addition to exercises on the parallel bars, horizontal bar, and pommel horse included...the shot put, long jump, and 100-yard dash! And, entering three teams, they won all the first three places! There are other examples of changes in gymnastics programs at other Olympics.
Only after the FIG began to manage the Olympic gymnastics competitions (and this happened for the first time in Antwerp in 1920), the competitions began to acquire an increasingly harmonious and orderly character. (The classic version of the men's hexathlon, which still exists today, appeared at the IX Games in Berlin.) This article is further evidence of the important role that international sports organizations play in the Olympic movement.
So far the conversation has been about men. Female gymnasts were first allowed to compete in the Games in 1928 in Amsterdam. However, we can seriously talk about the development of women's gymnastics at the Olympics only starting from the XV Games in Helsinki, when Soviet gymnasts entered the Olympic arena. But this is a topic for another article.
So, we noted the certain role played by the FIG in organizing the Olympic competitions. However, within the FIG itself, much needs to be done to further democratize it.
The USSR Gymnastics Federation, together with representatives of the federations of other socialist countries, has already achieved something in this direction. But every step was taken with great difficulty and invariably met with resistance from management, even contrary to common sense. Let's start with the admission of our country's gymnasts to the FIG. Having become accustomed to a quiet life in the Federation, which was headed by a representative of one of the founding countries, the Belgian Count d'Alviella, like many other leaders who had nothing to do with sports, the members of the FIG were aware that the arrival of the strongest gymnastics power in the Federation could not help but disturb the serene course of events. The American representative Moore, who was dictating his own terms in the International Gymnastics Federation for reasons that were not clear from a purely sporting point of view, was especially afraid of losing his influence.
The fears of the FIG leadership were, of course, justified. The triumphant performance of Soviet gymnasts at the Prague Festival in 1947 and the enthusiastic reviews in newspapers, and the no-less-brilliant demonstration of strength and skill of Soviet athletes at the Sokol rally, also in Czechoslovakia a year later, did not pass them by.
And yet the resistance was broken. In 1949, Soviet gymnasts were accepted into the FIG, and today one of the vice-presiedents of the federation is N.K. Popov (deputy chairman of the USSR Gymnastics Federation), the vice-president of the women's technical committee is T. A. Demidenko, B. A. Shakhlin is a member of the men's technical committee, and V. G. Bataen is a member of the rhythmic gymnastics committee.
However, this does not mean that it has become easy and simple for our representatives to work in the FIG. Our logical, life-based proposals continue to meet resistance from some people. Sometimes it takes several years before it is possible to prove and convince of the need for certain changes. This was the case with the proposal of the USSR delegation to introduce musical accompaniment for women's floor exercises.
The situation becomes even more complicated when the issue arises from purely technical problems. Only recently has it been possible to legalize meetings between gymnasts of the organization who are members of the FIG and those who are not members of the Federation. At first glance, the seemingly innocent obstacle had a certain underlying cause. The leaders of the FIG did not want to include working-class athletes in the international gymnastics orbit, since gymnasts from the Western countries' labor unions were usually not members of the Federation.
Only in Ljubljana was it possible to clarify the paragraph of the statute concerning the protocol for awarding the winners of competitions, and to eliminate the previously existing note, which the organizers of the world and European Championships could use to violate the rule itself. For example, such an attempt was made in Landskrona (Sweden) at the women's European Championship when, citing the interests of television, the organizers of the championship tried to completely abolish the procedure for awarding the winners. Even before the start of the competition, it was obvious that, among others, they would have to raise the flag of the GDR. This was obviously not to the taste of some circles in Sweden. Through the joint efforts of representatives of socialist countries, no violation of the protocol was allowed.
As before, the fight for the democratization of the FIG is on the agenda. Among other issues, there remains the problem of the patronizing attitude of some FIG leaders towards countries that discriminate against athletes. For example, the fact that South Africa, expelled from the Olympics, is still a member of the FIG, and that the Federation violated the sacred principles of the Olympic Charter, cannot but cause just indignation. The struggle to expel racists from gymnastics is the primary task facing representatives of the Soviet Union, the countries of the socialist commonwealth, and all progressive forces in the FIG.
Taisiya Demidenko, vice president of the women's technical committee of the FIG