Sovetsky Sport. August 30, 1972. And again, she has this amazing, incomprehensible roof over her head, some kind of open-work trusses, and beams three times the size of a person's arm span, like in a film studio which she had seen in a documentary. Olya feels incredibly small at the bottom of this huge arena amidst the buzzing stands. But next to her is the very calm Lyuda Turischeva and the affectionate Polina Grigorievna, just like a mother or a kindergarden teacher - so slender and graceful that all the girls are envious of her. It would be great to perform together with her right now! But she's already with them, Polina Astakhova. She gently nudged Olya onto the platform. "Go on, don't be afraid of anything. Just pretend it's a regular training session," she said, trying to reassure her.
And Olya Korbut convinced herself, and during the warm-up she did everything on the mat just as intensively as in Minsk at the Palace of Sports, where she and the other girls had trained for the last time.
On the yellow synthetic mat of the Sporthalle, under the famous roof, the second, most difficult, most amazing, and happiest day in the life of our Olympic gymnastics team began - a team in which most of the participants were making their debuts here in Munich. We are not mistaken in speaking of the majority, because, with the exception of the three newcomers - Korbut, Koshel, and Saadi - the competition in Munich became the first test for the Olympic team coach, Polina Astakhova. This quartet had not only never been to Mexico City, they hadn't even seen Ljubljana in the same way that those who carried the unbearably heavy burden of team competition at the world championships two years ago had seen it. But here it was even harder, because this was the Olympics!
But before that, there was the compulsory program, which was exhausting not so much physically as mentally. It's like a dictation test: if you stop to think about whether you need to put a comma or not, you're bound to make a mistake. It's better not to overthink things here, because judges are like that, they'll notice everything. Especially your lack of confidence.
The main competitors - the girls from the GDR team, especially Karin Janz - wrote the compulsory dictation in very neat handwriting. Perhaps it was this confidence that made a particular impression on the judges, who award her a score of 9.85 on the uneven bars.
But this score only spurred our girls on, and Astakhova's composure helped them to more easily cope with the disappointment over the unexpectedly low scores given by the judges on those same uneven bars. The girls happily finished the day, cheerfully and amicably. They didn't know that the judges' stinginess had been noticed in the stands, and the newspapers criticized them for this stinginess.
We quote these lines from the Munchen Merkur: "This time, the servants of Themis [the judges] should have removed their blindfolds, not tied them even tighter, when the Russian gymnasts were performing. Their courage truly deserves better." From the Suddeutsche Zeitung: "Not only were the 11,000 spectators captivated, but the judges must have been enchanted by these routines as well. They should have been appreciating the fantastic class, not jugding it."
The girls were offered an interesting game called 'chase,' in which they had to run as fast as they could, while the gymnasts from the GDR team had to chase after them. For them, the team competition was exactly that kind of game. And together, with Polina Grigorievna, they were calculating: "they have 187.3, and we have 189.15. How great that we're starting with the floor exercise - we'll run across the mat, but how will they catch up on the balance beam - you can't run fast there!"
And then Tonya Koshel started tumbling diagonally across the mat. She tumbled so carefully - a flip, another flip, a twist - it seemed so easy. But no. Right at the very end, landing after the twist, she touched the mat with her hands. And at that very moment, Richarda Schmeisser fell off the balance beam next to her. Schmeisser scored 8.85, Tonya 8.7. It's a game of 'catch me if you can.' Your opponent stumbles, and it seems like you're about to catch up to her, but you don't notice the holes in the ground beneath your feet.
The gymnasts in the lilac leotards became anxious. Irene Abel lost her balance on the beam, and then Christine Schmitt did too. But our girls - and this is where the strong team spirit came into play - rushed to help Tonya. Elya Saadi performed her optional routine with less of her usual expressiveness. She went onto the mat immediately after Koshel and tried to perform as neatly as possible. Nevertheless, a gentle lyricism shone through in her performance so brightly that the audience burst into applause, and a respectable score of 9.4 appeared on the scoreboard. Next, a Bach melody was played, embodied in the transparent, rhythmic design of Lyuba Burda. Then Tamara Lazakovich embroidered an intricate picture with satin stitch, which was given a score of 9.6, and after her...
It's simply impossible to describe Olga Korbut's floor exercise routine, because it doesn't fit into any classic definitions. The audience intially gasped quietly, then louder, and when Olga finished her routine, the stands erupted in wild applause. The audience rewarded the girl with pigtails, who had just shown them a grasshopper, a butterfly, and herself - a girl who wasn't afraid of any somersault or any complicated pirouette, soaring as if she weighed as little as a grasshopper.
A score of 9.75 seemed simply insulting to the enthusiastic audience, and they, of course, began to express their dissatisfaction.
Lyuda Turischeva turned her back to the mat as Olya was finishing her performance. She stood there, gathering her thoughts, and when she stepped onto the platform in her white leotard, the arena involuntarily fell silent. The melody from the film The Girl of my Dreams was unexpected because, after the first day, Turischeva had appeared to the Munich residents as a marble statue - cold, unapproachable, and strict. But here, before them, was a sweet girl, generous with her smiles, even somewhat flirtatious, who seemed to be performing high somersaults just for fun.
But even though after their first performance our girls, having scored a total of 47.95 points, further increased the gap, the GDR team had no intention of giving up. At least Erika Zuchold, a true devotee of gymnastics who knows how to maintain her composure even in the most difficult situations, demonstrated this. For her, the balance beam proved to be a challenge, preventing her from scoring more than 9.35. However, Zuchold achieved the main goal - she restored confidence to her team.
Meanwhile, our girls were not performing their vaults quite as well as they would have liked. Lazakovich twice failed to land cleanly after a front handspring with a twist. Her score was only 9.3. But the strength of our team lay in the fact that when one of the girls stumbled, the others compensated for the lost points. This consistent skill of the six gymnasts was evident in another circumstance. After the second and third gymnasts scored 9.4 and 9.5 points respectively, the scores continued to rise: Saadi and Koshel each scored 9.4, then Burda 9.55, Korbut 9.6, and finally Turischeva 9.7. The same was true on the uneven bars, although the events unfold more dramatically there.
In the uneven bars, our team beat the East German gymnasts, who had performed their floor exercises (a very rare occurrence 47.65:47.6). Of course, the girls in white were confident that their signature floor routines would earn them more points than their opponents' vaults, but the unexpected happened. Although all of our gymnasts, with the exception of Koshel, who made a serious mistake at the very beginning, performed their routines very well, were given unfairly low scores. Even Olga, the very same Olga who, after a breathtaking element that fully deserved the name 'Korbut element,' performed a dismount that made the audience gasp in amazement, even she was given a score of 9.7 by the judges, amidst the indignant uproar from the stands.
The East German gymnasts performed with great enthusiasm, and even scored more points than our team on the uneven bars - 47.9 to 47.55. But this was already a belated attempt to catch up with the leader. Because what happened next was something that not only the East German gymnasts didn't expect, but something that even the most experienced specialists in the arena couldn't have foreseen.
The team's head coach, Larisa Latynina, told us that in her memory there had never been a case where three athletes from the same team received a score of 9.75 for their balance beam routines. The girls weren't thinking about setting a record. At that moment, they had even forgotten about the medals, because otherwise they would have been more cautious, wouldn't have taken risks, would have omitted some difficult elements, and would have calmly secured the victory. They simply wanted to show everything they had prepared to this audience, which rewarded them with a standing ovation and, of course, to their coaches - E. Shtukman, V. Rastorotsky, R. Knysh, V. Dmitriev, V. Khomutov, and V. Aksenov - who had trained them and who were somewhere nearby, watching...
Yes, three scores of 9.75 - the Olympics had never seen anything like it before. It was a performance that, in itself, demonstrated that our young team possesses truly mature character. The Soviet team scored the highest total on the balance beam out of all the apparatuses - 48.2. This was an unexpected achievement. It allowed our girls to significantly outperform their strong rivals. The USSR team had a total of 380.50 points, while the GDR teamhad 376.55.
And then... Then there were the victory podium and huge medals on our chests, the national anthem playing for the first time at the Olympics in honor of our victory.
A popular Bavarian song has these lyrics: "Take a star with you when you go in search of happiness." They took these stars with them: Lyudmila Turischeva from Grozny, Tamara Lazakovich from Vitebsk, Olga Korbut from Grodno, Lyubov Burda from Voronezh, Elvira Saadi from Tashkent, and Antonina Koshel from Minsk.
TECHNICAL RESULTS
1. USSR - 380.50; 2. GDR - 376.55; 3. HUN - 368.25; 4. USA - 365.90; 5. TCH - 365.00; 6. ROM - 360.7
S. BLIZNYUK and M. SUPONEV