Sovetsky Sport. June 9, 1989. Our readers named the all-around European champion in gymnastics, Minsk resident Svetlana Boginskaya, the best athlete in May.
How many years have I never tired of being amazed by the gymnastics phenomenon: you look at the athletes when they are on the platform, and even more so on the TV screen, and it seems as if they are all slender and graceful. And you stand next to them when they are not in tracksuits, but in dresses and blouses, and you are amazed: how miniature and fragile they are - small and petite. I am not at all inclined to suffer over the past and exclaim with a tear in my voice: 'That was women's gymnastics!' I just want to advise you to make a simple calculation: how old will the current 14- or 15-year-old gymnasts be in Olympic Barcelona? About 18 or 19 years old. So when should they step onto the platform so that their human maturity coincides with their athletic maturity? Right now. Otherwise it will be too late.
However, I digress. Svetlana Boginskaya stood first in the Olympic ranks in our team in terms of height. On the platform - you look - she seems very strong. Up close, she's thin. You won't understand where the strength is hiding. The face is like a child and the bangs are youthful, but sometimes the look becomes serious and not at all childish. In the sixteen years she has lived, everything has already happened - both immeasurable joy and deep grief.
Our interview began with a conversation about her height.
Q: Sveta, are you still growing?
A: After Seoul, I grew by 4 centimeters.
Q: And how tall are you now?
A: 161 centimeters.
Q: Isn't it time to stop? [I glance at coach Ludmila Papkovich, and she shrugs in embarrassment.]
A: Yes, perhaps it's enough. But this doesn't depend on us. You can't argue with nature.
Q: What do you think, Sveta, is being tall by gymnastic standards good or bad for you?
A: It depends on how you look at it. On uneven bars, for example, it's difficult to perform. The little ones are better at giant swings. It's not easy to do things that involve balance, like balance beam exercises. It's difficult to do dismounts. In general, it's much more difficlt to work with a lot of amplitude, but it turns out beautiful and unusual.
Ludmila Papkovich joined our conversation:
"Judging by the European Championships, beauty is now valued no less than difficulty. It seems that the time of small, 'cheeky' gymnasts is ending. Our time is coming. But difficulty still comes at a price. There's no escape from it now. Actually, due to her higher difficulty, Sveta beat Romanian Daniela Silivas in the all-around. After all, they were tied right up to the final rotation. But Svetlana has a very difficult element in her third and final tumbling diagonal. It certainly didn't escape the judges. My student got the highest score, a 10. And Daniela complained about the judges in vain. Everything was fair."
Q: Svetlana, what's your favorite event?
A: Probably the beam.
Q: Which one is the hardest for you?
A: Probably the floor. [This is the event on which she received two 10s at the European Championships!]
Q: How do you like to compete more - in the compulsory and optional programs, or only in the optional?
A: According to the full Olympic program: that's more accurate. When the competition is limited to just one day, it's not the strongest who wins but the one who's the most successful.
Q: How did you become a gymnast? Were you taken to the gym?
A: No, no one brought me. I was still going to kindergarten when one day a young woman came to us. Her name was Ludmila Antonovna. She introduced herself and said that her last name was Savina, that she was a coach, and invited everyone who wanted to do gymnastics. I volunteered. Before that I did a little figure skating. I trained with Ludmila Antonovna for a short time. She left us for family reasons, and I moved to Labor Reserves with Lyubov Maksimovna Miromanova. Unfortunately, Lyubov Maksimovna died tragically after I became an Olympic champion. This was a huge grief for me, probably the biggest in my entire life. By the way, Miromanova came up with the nickname 'Boginya' [Goddess], and that's what she called me.
"I want to say," Papkovich noted, "from Miromanova and from coach Anatoly Kozeev in the youth team, Sveta acquired such a subtle sense of movement that she can offer a program of any difficulty on any event."
"Boginskaya comes from a simple working-class family, where she was instilled with love and respect for work from childhood. For this we, the coaches, are grateful to her parents, Leonid Yakovlevich and Anna Danilovna. It is through her hard work that Svetlana has achieved that she now has one of the most balanced programs in the world, and that she is now the only and undisputed leader of the team."
"True, unfortunately, she has a very difficult character. Although, now I remember, did any of our champions have an easy character? Probably not, not counting Maria Filatova of course."
What are her next major competitions?
In the fall, the national championship in Kiev. We want to prepare a new floor exercise for it, and save it until the world championships. I would like Sveta to be portrayed in a slightly different light.
Q: Sveta, I heard that you don't really like my fellow journalists. Did they offend you in any way?
A: No, they didn't. But, you see, everyone asks the same thing. I get tired of answering.
Try to be patient. They will probably keep asking you for a long time. And readers of different newspapers are often interested in the same thing.
Still, I didn't ask the Goddess the traditional question about her hobby. I remembered the great footballer of our time, Michel Platini, who answered that his hobby was...football. And if for Sveta Boginskaya, the Goddess at sixteen years old, gymnastics remains not only the main thing, but also her favorite thing, then she will reap many more laurels.
M. SUPONEV