Sovetsky Sport. September 17, 1982. The winning women's team was determined at the national championship - Dinamo's first team (N. Yurchenko, I. Ilienko, O. Mostepanova, A. Shishova, V. Selezneva and E. Veselova). They beat the first team of the Armed Forced by 10.75 points and the first team of Trud by 14 points.
Soviet gymnastics is having a kind of golden anniversary - 50 years ago, women participated in the national championship for the first time. The winner was 20-year-old Kharkov resident Tatyana Voshchinina (at the beginning of the month Tatyana Evgenievna celebrated her 70th birthday, on which we take this opportunity to congratulate her).
A typical detail of those times - Voschehinina was a versitile athlete and she tried her hand at gymnastics only a year before that victory. But, by the way, the program of the first national championship included, in addition to gymnastics in its modern sense, also a track and field sprint, cross-country, shooting, and grenade throwing. Due to her sporting versatility, Voshchinina was then ahead of such stars of her time as I. Schefer, M. Tyshko, and N. Kublitskaya. Later Tatyana became a tennis coach.
Over half a century, sports have fenced themselves in with quite strong fences of specialization. But within each "courtyard" the all-around (in the modern sense) is still in honor. And in this sense, the victory of the Dinamo girls, who had the most solidly balanced program of all team members (although, to be fair, we note that on the day of the optional competition Selezneva performed with a painful leg injury, but she produced scores that counted towards the team total), is indicative.
This time the competition schedule was not quite normal - the women performed the compulsory and optional programs without a rest day: they finished in the evening and started again in the morning. Therefore, this report covers two days.
I'll start with the compulsory. Here the leaders were identified immediately, in blue leotards with the letter "D": Rostovite N. Yurchenko, Muscovite O. Mostepanova, Alma-Ata resident N. Ilienko.
Mostepanova is the discovery of the season. She is only 14 and is making her debut on the adult platform. She was brought up in Moscow Dinamo where Vladimir Aksenov, who brought up Olympic champion Elvira Saadi, and Saadi herself have been working actively and creatively. In the second Dinamo national team there are two more 14-year-old Muscovites from the same school: N. Timakova and S. Kibanova. Thus, Dinamo gymnastics received a significiant addition to its powerful base school of Vladislav Rastorotsky from Rostov. He has four students in two teams: Yurchenko, Shishova, Veselova, and E. Ponomarenko.
So, who is Mostepanova? She is the winner of the spring Riga international competition and the Youth Games. Small, pale, clean, nimble, sharp. Bold and unique. In the compulsory program on the uneven bars, when transitioning to the handstand position, she gracefully moved her palm to the side. Only Yurchenko, about whom we will talk later, received a 0.1 (9.8) bonus here. Then, both of them plus Ilienko earned 9.5 on the beam, and an unexpected, even incidental, episode occurred on floor.
The world champion in this event, red-haired Natasha Ilienko, tried very hard. Her graceful body was just shaking. But coach Yuri Tsapenko was right on target when he said in advance: "Natashenka, 11 points is impossible, 10 is enough for you, work calmly." At first she walked on her hands in the handstand, then she got distracted, and in the end she sat down on the mat - 8.5. Looking ahead, I will say that in the optional program Ilienko made mistakes everywhere except on the floor, where she was a charming shadow of the women's gymnastics of the past, but even nostalgia didn't make the judges more generous than 9.25.
And Yurchenko is in the lead. She was good both days (well, she fell off the beam, but who didn't fall that day?). I am convinced that in future reports we will have to write about her - assess the gaps in points and the reliability, so to speak, the moral unskakability of leadership. But briefly, for now. This entire year is passing under the star of this tall 17-year-old beauty, a first-year student at the Rostov Pedagogical Institute: in the spring she won the Moscow News tournament, in the summer she won the USSR Cup. I remember her from a long time ago, she gave a lot of hope and let Rastorotsky down a lot - she fell apart at crucial moments. But the wisdom of the teacher was in the fact that he led Natasha in the unpretentious and thorough way of his first glorious pupil Lyudmila Turischeva, performing not individual tricks but a harmonious and difficult all-around program designed for growth. And when Yurchenko reached it, technical and psychological stability came.
As for Mostepanova, she is 1.45 points behind Yurchenko. On both days she also sparkled on everything, but she also fell off the beam. Army athlete L. Kovalenko is in third place in the overall standings.
In the second - not strongest - stream, such titled gymnasts as Stella Zakharova, Elena Polevaya and Tatiana Arzhannikova performed in the "all-around" group. This fact in itself causes mixed feelings: I feel sorry for the athletes who are not needed by the national teams of their societies (even the second teams!), I feel sorry for the many years of effort and futile expectations. But, on the other hand, you need to look decent, even at sunset. Especially when you are an Olympic champion, world champion and two-time World Cup winner. I'm talking about Zakharova. The state of her athletic form, just the outward appearance in which she appeared here, does not honor either her or her coach V. Kuksa.
An opposite example is Maria Filatova. It's somehow embarrassing to say that she is the oldest here (at the age of 21), and she has been competing with dignity on the national team since Montreal. Now she seriously, as always, responsibly and selflessly led the Armed Forces team. Now she lives in Minsk and trains with N. Miligulo.
TECHNICAL RESULTS
48th USSR gymnastics championships. Chelyabinsk. Sum of compulsory and optional programs. Optional scores are in parentheses.
1. N. Yurchenko (Dinamo 1) - 77.4 (9.8, 9.9, 9.25, 9.7); 2. O. Mostepanova (Dinamo 1) - 75.95 (9.75, 9.7, 8.8, 9.4); 3. L. Kovalenko (Army 1) - 74.75 (9.55, 9.8, 9.5, 9.3); 4. A. Shishova (Dinamo 1) - 74.7; 5. E. Prusova (Trud 1) - 73.4; 6. E. Veselova (Dinamo 1) - 73.2.
Team standings. 1. Dinamo 1 - 376.4; 2. Army 1 - 365.65; 3. Trud 1 - 362. 4; 4. Labor Reserves - 359.6; 5. Spartak - 356.2; 6. Zenit - 354.85.
S. TOKAREV